Practical View of the Cloud – How To Leverage and Gain Value from a Cloud Infrastructure

As discussed in this series’ previous article , cloud computing delivers flexible services over the Internet. With the right approach, cloud computing can scale easily, reduce costs and deliver smart IT.

The Cloud concept is an existing form of computing that will co-exist in the short, medium and long term. It is important to have a clear understanding of the advantages and disadvantages that cloud services can provide. It is also imperative to have a good understanding of the plan and goals of your cloud deployment, while carefully preparing the implementation the technology.

Planning

The first phase in the process of cloud adoption is the planning. During this phase, high level design is usually generated and it is a crucial step before any investment is made. An assessment should help map an organization’s business drivers, identify in-house expertise to support the initiative and address the top concerns.

The steps in the planning process include evaluating the following areas:

• Prime candidates and applications suited for the cloud migration
• Backup
• Monitoring
• Management

All of these components should be addressed as part of the initial assessment. In this phase, IT managers should also determine the cause of issues within their environment and should examine areas within their IT infrastructure that would benefit the most from cloud services. Unhealthy infrastructures or complex applications are usually not prime candidates for cloud migration.

The planning phase will also help establish goals and provide a strategy for how to adopt cloud services. It will provide good communication and future guidelines, while taking internal challenges into consideration. Internal key stakeholders (architects, team leads, infrastructure leads) should be involved and provide a consensus with the new direction.

There are several risks that should to be addressed while considering the adoption of cloud services, including vendor lock-in, manageability challenges, security and cost.

Patience is important with cloud adoption. Companies should determine a realistic timeline and outline key deliverables for the design in advance. It is also important to indentify potential ROI opportunities by examining areas of cost savings that will result from the project.

Analyzing the True Costs of the Cloud

Total cost of ownership (TCO) and ROI can be very tricky. Measuring TCO includes many factors that are not usually taken into consideration with internal cloud or with traditional IT. The following formula can assist with calculating TCO: Cost of Infrastructure + Cost of Operations + Cost of Software + Cost of Risk = TCO

The cost of infrastructure, operations and software might seem clear. However, some costs are often overlooked, including costs that cannot scale down with traditional IT. This means that hardware and resources cannot be returned to the vendor when they are not needed. In addition, the cost of risk is a bit tricky. In order to calculate this cost, IT managers need to take into consideration vendor lock-in engagement, security and other risks.

ROI may vary based on the scale. Pay as you go models might be challenging with large enterprise applications, so IT managers need to make sure that the cloud provider will be able to provide the flexibility, scalability and agility within cost constraints.

Migration Approach