A cloud business is a business.
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Cloud sticker shock: This is what many CFOs experience as their usage, data transfer and storage costs increase after using cloud services for a period of time. Any savings in “renting” compared to buying computing services and applications quickly disappears. But it’s not about the money saved. And should not have been saved.
it’s more about money make “Due to increased agility, speed to market and innovation,” said David Linthicum, chief cloud strategy officer at Deloitte Consulting and author of the recently published book, An Insider’s Guide to Cloud Computing. I’m here. You also get great peace of mind with the superior security and availability that cloud providers offer.
This is especially important today as businesses embrace artificial intelligence and machine learning and rely on cloud providers to provide the computing power and big data storage needed to make it work. The growth of AI will give these providers an increasing edge in negotiations and contracts, requiring cloud customers to understand how their business works.
A long-time consultant, author, and speaker on the cloud economy, Linthicum observes that cloud providers do business like any other company and, naturally, don’t want to let go of their stores.
Below are just a few of Linthicum’s notes on working with cloud providers.
- Vendor lock-in is inevitable when moving to the cloud. Many cloud providers talk about flexibility in and out of their domains as if they were some sort of technology “Switzerland” that is neutral in all respects. “If you have localized your applications and databases using the cloud provider’s native capabilities, moving to another cloud means continuing to modify your code and databases to accommodate another cloud provider’s native cloud services. It means we need to,” Linthicum points out. “You are just moving from one walled garden to another. Application processing, governance, security, database access, etc. need to adapt to accommodate the services of new public cloud providers. there is.”
- Cloud providers don’t clean up customer confusion. The adage “automate chaos, get automated chaos” has been updated, and on-premises chaos becomes cloud-based chaos. It doesn’t fix inefficiencies, spaghetti architecture, or junk data moved from onsite to the cloud. This is also important because storage is the most expensive and scalable part of the cloud. “When you move junk data from on-premises to the cloud, it’s still junk data,” Linthicum points out. “Migrating data to the public cloud usually makes things worse for most companies. To make matters worse, panic fixes deployed in the cloud (e.g., just throwing resources at the problem) are even more cost-effective.” All of this needs to be addressed before moving to the cloud.
- Cloud providers don’t hold the customer’s hand. “Many cloud providers mistakenly believe they also provide best practice information for moving data from on-premises storage systems to cloud-based storage systems,” says Linthicum. “Just think about it. It’s not their responsibility. And there’s absolutely no business incentive to improve storage efficiency and agility because poorly planned results will benefit them.” It’s their job to keep running and solve any problems that arise on the service side.You are not the cloud provider, you are an expert in what it takes to solve a particular problem in your business, or you are an expert. I have to come home.”
- It may be better to leave something on the premises. “What is often overlooked when looking for a cloud storage solution is that cloud storage is not always the solution,” Linthicum said. “Traditional on-premises storage can be more cost-effective than cloud-based storage, even given the potential advantages of cloud computing, such as speed, agility, and ability to better support innovation. On-premises solutions such as solid state drives may provide the speed and scale needed for specific applications.
- Public cloud providers are hesitant about multi-tenancy approaches. Multi-tenancy, sharing resources with perhaps thousands of other cloud customers, has been a long-standing concern. Resource sharing can result in slow or “bursty” performance. Still, the cloud provider said, “The public has come to offer solid multi-tenant services that optimize performance, even as they multiplex the cloud across a variety of physical resources.” Linthicum says. At the same time, “Public cloud providers see their approach to multi-tenancy as unique to their IP. What goes on behind the scenes in native public cloud systems actually dictates how providers perform multi-tenancy. may request clarification of how multi-tenancy will be performed in connection with any compliance audits it may need to support.”
Mr. Linthicum leaves us with the following thoughts. “Cloud computing is not magic and its adoption does not guarantee success. Companies must make a series of sound strategic decisions in order for cloud computing to deliver its promised value. For many companies, cloud computing will be a new avenue of trial and error, and the key here is to question everything as you move forward with cloud computing and other technologies.”
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