The Cloud: If the Business Needs It, You’ll Have It. If Not, You’ll Find an Excuse!

When thinking about writing this article, I was actually wondering, do I really need to get started on why businesses should prioritize moving to the cloud? By now the majority of business managers and IT administrators have already read many cloud related articles and listened to a large number of talks related to this topic.

The truth is that you really need to move to the cloud when the business you work for is asking for all of the cloud benefits. Do your employees need access to data at all times, from any location, using any kind of device? Do they need it to quickly responding to customers, handling and increasing efficiency of daily operations? Does your company rely on a diversity of systems to run? If the answer to all this is “Yes!” as I assume it is for many businesses out there, then it’s clear you should consider moving to the cloud.

With this in mind I have gathered a list of critical factors you should consider when planning your cloud migration. Let’s check them out!

The Costs

• Start-up costs. In this category are all the expenses you have with buying the required licenses, production materials, training, payroll and travel.

• Ongoing costs. Depending on the cloud environment you choose, you have to keep an eye on the ongoing CapEx, OpEx and the ongoing costs of compliance. For instance, for private clouds the costs will be higher as it will be your responsibility to ensure compliance of the cloud infrastructure as well as the cloud services. With a public cloud, you will only need to ensure compliance of your cloud application, although you need to make sure your cloud provider meets all of your compliance needs.

• Other Costs. You should also be aware of non-monetary costs such as time to perform analysis, migration and testing.

• Hidden Costs. As efficient as cloud is, most shared IaaS providers do not automatically scale up and down your virtuals, this means that even if your app is idle, the operating systems are running, using up valuable resources.  There can be tremendous savings by allocating efficiency services to monitor and make adjustments through your cloud administration interface.

The Benefits

• Disaster Recovery. Already a well-known benefit of the cloud, disaster recovery is ensured by the fact that relying on cloud-based services means companies no longer need complex disaster recovery plans. This is as an easy win and is often the first big move into the cloud for many businesses.

• Competitive Advantage. The cloud grants access to enterprise-class technology. It also allows smaller businesses to compete with the largest competitors.

• Keeping up with technological advancements. Cloud computing is a reality for all companies no matter what their size, including SMBs and even small home offices. Moving to the cloud will save money, not just for your cloud security needs, but for many other types of data center workloads. Moreover, mobility is an important factor for employees nowadays. Being able to work from anywhere is proven to positively affect an employee’s work-life balance and productivity.

Are you having trouble deciding whether your company needs to leverage cloud computing capabilities? Maybe you’re already in the middle of the migration process? No matter the case, please feel free to share your business story and challenges with us!

Photo credits: ~jjjohn~