Cloud Optimization: How do you plan your Cloud Strategy when the cloud changes faster than your applications?

Cloud and its Impact on Business

In enterprise computing, the cloud represents a paradigm change. When compared to traditional on-premise infrastructure, the cloud offers significant cost savings at scale for businesses. According to Checkpoint, over 52% of businesses globally prefer cloud solutions that have their own native security tools.

The real time-time analytics enabled by advanced design capabilities allows cloud services to launch new products and services. Virtual research and development also enhance the speed at which internal IT applications are created.

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Organizations that think strategically and build robust processes to keep on track will get greater results when it comes to cloud cost optimization.

Multiple elements affect the growth of cloud storage, some of which include the growth of unstructured data and increased demand for advanced technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT). You can minimize heavy operations by establishing a smart architecture and optimizing workloads for efficiency by seeking our cloud optimization services.

Let’s look at the need for a cloud strategy and why having one can benefit your organization:

Why Adopt a Cloud Strategy?

The number of non-traditional, unstructured data has been growing at an increasing speed, and improved video qualities such as 4k resolution cameras have resulted in a stark increase in the amounts of video data. Alongside this, the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning is growing at a fast pace, projected to increase in the near future owing to improve overall data security.

A cloud strategy is required to build a plan of action to achieve long-term success with these data-driven initiatives. Ideally, it is best to document your cloud strategy as comprehensively as one would their business strategy as they will differ according to different stages in the business and the reasons for moving to the cloud.

It’s important to go through the best practices for Cloud Operations Management. Isn’t it?

There are a few benefits an organization reaps by adopting a comprehensive cloud strategy. Let’s see them:

• Boosted Visibility in the Cloud Market: Business value can be boosted consecutively by making sure that organizations are able to seize any opportunities that arise to stay ahead of the competition. With a proper strategy, the cloud can solve the business problems by enabling new innovation- along with adaptable security frameworks
• Choosing a Secondary Provider in a Multi-Cloud Setting: Most enterprises decide on one service provider to use as a service (IaaS) or platform as a service (PaaS) provider. There is a need to focus on business needs along with choosing to keep a secondary provider for additional application use cases. Businesses should try not to get locked into a single cloud provider, as there requires constant vigilance on adopting a secondary provider. This is owing to new use cases cropping up everyday. ·
• Build Scalability and Resilience in the Cloud Architecture: The cloud infrastructure requires to be resilient in the face of cyber threats. There is a continual disruption in the organization through threats like ransomware and natural disasters like the pandemic. When cloud services enable your business to run when your competitors might be suffering through delays or downtimes- it’s an opportunity to create a better brand image on the market.
• Upgrade for Cloud-Native Applications using Containers: Cloud helps in maintaining the environment’s integrity as the application moves down the chain of delivery. Containers help to move applications between varying host servers and also retain the ability to move workloads between on-premise infrastructure to the cloud. This makes services available on a continuous basis.
• Use Serverless Computing to Boost Productivity: During the management of computing resources, developers are enabled to focus on writing code to handle very specific events. These instance-specific codes are then rolled into a function that is serverless. The serverless runtime runs the code as many times as it requires to serve the incoming requests.

Building a Comprehensive Cloud Strategy

If the enterprise under question is relatively small and still works predominantly on traditional architecture, an analysis must be carried out to make certain that the base product is functioning, profitable, and doesn’t require a lot of change. Following are the steps to follow when developing a cloud strategy for an on-premise business:

• Lifting and Rehosting in New Environment: Most traditional business settings begin their journey to the cloud by taking whatever data is available in the data centre and hosting it on the cloud. There needs to be a clear demarcation as to what kinds of data are stored on the cloud and what is stored in the data centre. When the two are mixed together, it can lead to a lot of instability and challenges.
• Reiterate Rapidly to Cut Costs: There is a need to look at the budget that is attached to the system and identify which products, features, and unit costs are the most expensive. The resources that got a certain job done in a data centre setting, might not be as cheap in the cloud. Therefore, the iteration and work on development must be focused on the cost it takes to deliver the final features and products to the market.
• Rapid Change through Flexibility: Customer activity needs to be somewhat aligned with the system activity, and the overall costs and business goals of the enterprise. This can only be achieved when there is a mindset that allows for flexibility for rapid change. Teams need to think of managed services on the cloud that can help leverage underlying business potential and how to go faster than ever when the company ran on on-premise infrastructure.

Winding Up

Before moving to the cloud, you must research if the service or product line is rapidly changing in the market. If systems can scale this rapid change- it’s a reasonable enough decision. Services that do not change too rapidly on the market can also hinder the adoption of cloud technology as it’s meant to make faster what is already moving forward with momentum.

Keeping cost in mind is imperative to point out, as cost management is always an integral part of a cloud strategy. Success must be measured in terms of your gross margins to business – if the business is successful, the customer growth and profits will grow with time. Tracking unit costs can go a long way as it creates a repository of information with the past customer and business experiences to leverage for the future.