For most businesses, change is driven by the need to reduce risk and innovate, while optimizing cost and return on investment. In the case of cloud adoption, the powerful functionality offered by these platforms enable businesses to streamline, optimise, and make their workflows more efficient which, in turn, helps reduce costs. Organizations are always looking for the best solutions for optimizing efficiency and reducing costs, particularly in uncertain economic times.
Yet, in reality, migrating to the cloud does not always bring the cost optimization and savings that an organization is looking to benefit from. Depending on which cloud solution is being evaluated, along with how the solution is designed, built, and deployed, the result may not deliver on the project’s original goals.
Why is this?
The pricing models of certain cloud platforms can be difficult to understand, due to their granular and complex pricing structures. Without a complete and informed understanding, along with a rigorous planning process, the result can be unexpected and unpredictable costs. To ensure that the right choices are made to achieve strategic objectives, it is critical for businesses to utilize skilled expertise, both business and technical, to navigate the variety of decisions that need to be made.
Cloudy Estimates Versus Real Costs
When exploring cloud pricing structures, the initial costs may seem quite attractive but after delving deeper to examine the details, certain aspects may become cloudy. The pricing tiers add a layer of complexity which means there isn’t a single recurring cost to add to the balance sheet. Rather, cloud fees vary depending on the provider, features, and several usage factors such as on-demand use, data transfer volumes, technical support, bandwidth, disk performance, and other core metrics, which can influence the overall solution’s price.
However, the good news is there are ways to gain control of and manage these costs. One option is to lean on a Managed Service Provider (MSP) that understands the pricing structures used by cloud providers and can plan and identify potential overlapping services, eliminate inefficiencies from the organization’s core applications and data, and make decisions that optimise spend. With this understanding, the result is a right-sized and optimized application and network architecture that can result in streamlined and predictable cloud costs.
Reducing Risks and Increasing Complexity
Adopting a multi-cloud approach offers many benefits for organizations, such as enhanced reliability as workloads are distributed across multiple clouds. Vendor diversity can minimize potential downtime and reduce the risks associated with outages that may occur with a single provider. A multi-cloud strategy also allows organizations to choose the platform that will deliver their applications in the most efficient way possible, both in terms of performance and cost. However, it is important to consider the implications regarding management overhead, the required skill set, and the need to ensure optimized cost across multiple platforms with differing models.
To benefit from a multi-cloud approach, companies should weigh up the risks of opting for one vendor against the complexities of working with several providers. This might add additional requirements to design, procure, and manage connectivity between different platform architectures, not only adding complexity to the solution but also potentially adding further costs to the balance sheet.
However, there are ways to manage these costs and often calling on the expertise of an MSP to assist with the design, implementation, and real time monitoring and analytics of the platform can help to keep a firm handle on the usage and costs by optimizing architectures and connectivity across providers.
Investing in Skills, Expertise and Security
Whilst understanding the costs associated with using a public cloud solution is critical, it is important to emphasize that modern cloud platforms provide robust, comprehensive and cutting-edge technologies and solutions to help drive businesses forward. Cloud platforms provide a strong foundation of physical infrastructure, robust platform-level services, and a wide array of resilient connectivity and data solutions.
In addition, cloud providers continually invest in the security of their solutions to physically and logically secure the hardware and software layers with access control, monitoring tools, and stringent data security measures to keep the data safe. These companies can invest much more into their security than individual businesses would invest in their private cloud and data centers, which results in cloud providers meeting the highest, industry-leading security and compliance standards. This investment serves to benefit the companies that use these solutions. Further, it delivers a high-quality, secure solution that companies can use as a strong foundation for their strategic and innovation focus.
Beyond the security benefits, companies also potentially save on operational costs as they do not need to manage data centers, infrastructure, and connectivity platforms, where skilled expertise is in short supply and high demand. This can be a core area to assist in optimizing cost, whilst also enabling organizations to focus on strategic initiatives within their business.
Partnering for Added Value
While the initial allure of cost savings is a major drawcard for companies when evaluating a move to cloud platforms, this should not be the only reason for considering a migration, particularly as deeper examination reveals the complexities around cost models.
A strategic approach is required to determine the right platform for each organization’s specific needs. Making this choice can be a challenge, however, with the right planning, expertise, and foresight, organizations can truly benefit from the latest technologies available today.
By partnering with an MSP, companies gain a team of experts who are experienced in navigating the most cost-effective and secure cloud platforms that will deliver a variety of benefits at a price point that is predictable and cost effective. These experts can help alleviate the frustration and provide clarity and focus to ensure projects are put on the right path for success.
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Sam Woodcock is Senior Director of Cloud Strategy and Enablement, 11:11 Systems
