If your organisation is thinking about cloud adoption, you’re not alone. The ‘cloud-first’ attitude has gained considerable momentum in recent years. It is set to continue, with 50% of UK organisations having a cloud bias (TechTarget/Computer Weekly IT Priorities 2022).
Cloud is a strategic and responsive solution for organisations, with multiple cloud environments available to meet business and workload requirements. Hybrid cloud can provide your organisation with a bespoke solution that combines the right mix of on-prem, private and public cloud infrastructures.
Enhanced scalability, flexibility, control, cost-efficiency, agility, and innovation are all big pluses for organisations and why many adopt hybrid on their journey to the cloud. But with no standardised ‘one-size-fits-all’ solution, you should evaluate several things as you develop your cloud strategy.
Here are four priorities for a robust cloud strategy:
1. Costs and ROI
With higher operational efficiency, faster deployment cycles and lower cost of ownership, a hybrid cloud approach can offer a cost-effective cloud solution, but how do you make sure you’re managing your costs and getting the best ROI? You should be evaluating:
- Existing infrastructure
Your organisation may have previously invested a lot of money in existing infrastructure – and key stakeholders may have questions about paying for something new while it’s still valid. Existing infrastructure can remain helpful to your organisation only if it aligns with your business requirements. So, you’ll want to evaluate how existing infrastructure can work with hybrid cloud and the associated costs of maintaining it and keeping it operational (space/storage, updates, security, parts, time, etc.). Evaluating this against potential cloud consumption costs over the same life span of current infrastructure will help you assess CAPEX vs. OPEX.
- Data storage and growth
It’s essential to evaluate the costs of data storage now vs. potential expenses due to growth in data down the line. As an organisation, you will accumulate more and more data – so how and where will this be stored?
If you’re thinking on-prem, you should evaluate the costs of acquiring new systems and understand how teams access your valuable data. It might be that with its potential for cloud-bursting, private or public cloud can offer a more scalable and cost-effective solution than buying new infrastructure. Similarly, PAYG data storage might be more cost-effective than a more significant initial investment, as you’ll only pay for the data storage you use – but this should be continually evaluated with a cost control strategy to ensure you continue to maximise value.
- Cloud skills and management
Additional costs include hiring or training to acquire and maintain essential cloud skills on your team. You may also find it necessary to outsource to a managed service provider or consultant if the migration method for an application or workload is more complex. Make sure also to include the impact (and associated costs) of individuals shifting priority to cloud management over your legacy infrastructure in your evaluation.
2. Workload requirements
Before adopting a hybrid cloud solution, you need to evaluate your workload requirements. Rather than driving cloud decisions from infrastructure needs up, consider workload needs down. Evaluate each workload (database, application, container, etc.) based on its architecture, usage and resource requirements – asking questions like:
Is it static, does it face spikes, or is it unpredictable with drastic increases or decreases in traffic? Can the workload run on cloud by default? Is it CPU intensive with high compute requirements and multiple users?
Let’s examine how you might evaluate your databases and applications as examples…
- Databases
According to Gartner, 2022 is the year that 75% of all databases will be deployed or migrated to a cloud platform. So, what do you need to consider?
You should evaluate what type of storage you might need in the cloud, such as object, file or block. You’ll want to assess the best structure to store and access your databases to determine the optimal type of storage or hierarchy for your database. Data sovereignty will also be an essential consideration – your organisation will need to evaluate what requirements must be adhered to and the most suitable environment for that database. In this case, private cloud might provide the best solution for adhering to stringent data requirements.
- Applications
With applications, you’ll want to think about new vs. legacy applications. If you have any applications built for on-prem infrastructure, they may not be able to be moved to the cloud without re-architecting. Similarly, you’ll need to consider what workloads can support the scalability of public cloud without impacting the service performance.
Please make sure you are also prioritising applications that will benefit your organisation by improving the customer experience, enhancing productivity or delivering efficiency. AWS’s 7Rs provide an excellent framework for understanding and evaluating migration strategies when moving applications to the cloud. To better understand which workloads should be migrated to the cloud as a priority, we recommend building an evaluation tool that details each workload and its specific requirements.
3. Data security
Managing security across multiple cloud environments can be complex. To ensure you don’t become one of the 46.3% of enterprises that report data security management as the number one barrier to adopting hybrid cloud (NTT 2021 Hybrid Cloud Report), here are five questions to review:
- How secure is your current infrastructure?
- What measures are currently in place?
- What security frameworks does the infrastructure follow?
- Are all infrastructures up to date?
- What systems are in place to protect your infrastructure?
This step is critical to prevent potential risks and cyber security threats; once you have evaluated your workloads, consider additional cyber security measures like Managed Detection and Response to protect your endpoints and infrastructure. Business continuity also needs to be considered as you evaluate data security – what does your organisation have in place for a worst-case scenario? Building a secure cloud landing zone with guardrails within the cloud can give you a solid foundation to manage access and changes securely.
4. Cloud skills gaps
Your final key priority to evaluate will be to determine if any IT/cloud skills organisation gaps within you may impact processes for managing and servicing workloads across your cloud environments. This is essential to a robust cloud strategy and will enable any organisational restructure or development required to maximise the value you get from your hybrid cloud solution.
Your cloud engineers must be prepared to respond to risks and challenges, such as potential cloud downtime. In addition, they should have their finger on the pulse of your cloud provider’s latest developments and innovations. The rate and scale at which these developments occur will depend on your chosen cloud provider (e.g. AWS, Azure, Google Cloud). Still, management will be necessary to maintain efficient and secure systems and infrastructure.
*A tip from the Brightsolid team is to ensure that migration processes are documented for continuity and to help new cloud engineers join your team.
Are you considering cloud?
We want you to get the most out of your cloud solution, so we consider your business needs in line with these four key priorities to strategise, develop and manage a robust hybrid cloud strategy that works.
Talk to one of our Brightsolid experts to discover the following steps on your journey to the cloud.