The pace of change in cloud computing technology can be blindingly fast. A company can decide to, for example,  move certain workloads to the cloud using the newest technology — only to find that during the migration the tech has gone from “best and latest” to “somewhat obsolete.”

Catching trends in cloud tech can be frustrating and expensive. It’s a bit of a trick to calculate when precisely is the right time for an organization to stop using the previous generation of computing architecture, processes and software services to jump to the next generation, because you don’t want to be too late to leverage new tech, nor too early to properly modernize legacy systems.

“Our approach [at Accenture] is very much trying to find … what’s the business reason behind [the move to cloud?], because until I realize why somebody wants to modernize, it’s very hard to give the answer to how do you modernize,” said Miha Kralj (pictured), managing director of cloud strategy and architecture science at Accenture PLC.

Kralj spoke with Stu Miniman (@stu) and Rebecca Knight (@knightrm), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the Microsoft Ignite event in Orlando, Florida. They discussed why cloud native is a better solution and why the Microsoft alliance is so important to Accenture. (* Disclosure below.)

The advantages of cloud-native

Among the varied computing models for today’s enterprises is cloud native, where an organization starts from zero, basing itself and its technology decisions to be 100 percent in the cloud. Another option is for a company to keep its traditional information technology organization but also forms a separate, cloud-based entity. Straddling this fence can also lead to integration problems for computing architectures. The traditional on-premises database goes through its own cycle of development, and it’s one that is going be inherently slower than the cloud applications’ cycles, Kralj explained.

“The thing that is really hard to do is to … integrate those two into a very good hybrid cohesive schema,” Kralj stated.

Regarding its alliance with Microsoft, Accenture has specifically targeted, strategic relationships with many large technology vendors. The size of the alliance and the importance of the alliance reflects the size of the market, as well as Accenture’s belief in how successful a long-term specific technology stack is going to be.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the Microsoft Ignite event. (* Disclosure: Accenture sponsored this segment, with additional broadcast sponsorship from Cohesity Inc. Accenture, Cohesity, and other sponsors do not have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE