Today’s CIOs need to focus on deciding, setting up and upholding the best cloud management strategy for their organisations.
The decision is not an easy one due to the complexity of cloud environments. Between building a private cloud and offloading workloads to a public cloud system, there is also the choice of using a hybrid infrastructure while keeping some workflows on-premises.
In this post, we look at a few strategies to aid in your choice of a cloud management solution.
1. Know What to Expect
With cloud services, the expectations regarding the level of service and costs involved should be transparent. With various cloud options on the market, it is easier for enterprises to be caught off guard and make a choice strictly based on budget considerations or popularity.
Look at the benefits and level of maintenance, service and security involved in the solution, as cloud success is not just about transitioning your business operations in the cloud. The true test of cloud success includes the managing and maintenance of the cloud environment.
2. Choose Your Option: Mix and Match
Hybrid or multi-cloud environments are proving popular options since most enterprises consume a mix of services and applications. As a rule of thumb, most sensitive data and operations can be hosted on private infrastructure, while other resource-intensive processes can leverage the public cloud successfully.
According to IDC, more than 85% of enterprises choose a multi-cloud architecture that includes public cloud services, private clouds and hosted clouds. Furthermore, half of these enterprises take advantage of the cloud flexibility to expand or contract the network as required.
Ideally, long-term business needs and goals should determine the scale and complexity of the cloud infrastructure required and the suitable mix.
3. Keep a Close Eye on Costs
Aside from network capacity planning and maintenance considerations, cost-efficiency is a vital business factor. Cloud infrastructure can become an affordable option compared to on-premises infrastructure and their increasing hardware requirements.
Even so, the often pay-as-you-go nature of the cloud – think about the public cloud, for example – can be easily overlooked once the subscription is set up. Managing subscriptions closely to take advantage of the services needed most efficiently requires careful planning.
According to Gartner, cloud costs need to be managed just as with on-premises infrastructure to avoid unwanted expenses and costly mistakes.
In conclusion, building a cloud management strategy should focus on capacity planning, the right solution mix for the budget, and other conditions such as maintenance policies and security controls.
Does your IT Infrastructure Provide the Scalability and Performance your Business Requires?
VMware’s cloud technologies assist organisations to fully and securely leverage VMware hybrid clouds and native public clouds for increased agility, accelerated innovation and optimised costs.
