For many enterprises, migrating workloads to the public cloud begins and ends with the lift-and-shift process of moving servers, storage and networking hardware from on-premises data centers to an infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) provider. It’s a popular strategy that eliminates capital investment, relieves IT teams of infrastructure oversight and enables pay-as-you-go pricing and dynamic scaling for variable workloads.
But much more needs to be done to control costs and realize the full benefits of cloud technology.
Without new controls, monthly IaaS fees can balloon far beyond budget because of issues such as poor initial cost and policy planning, cloud provider markups and the inability to leverage the scalability of on-premises infrastructure. Without moving beyond the IaaS model to host operating systems and applications in the cloud, IT remains saddled with traditional licensing and management overhead. Without taking advantage of other native cloud services, performance optimization and automation capabilities are limited.
In this eWEEKData Points article, Scott Cameron, principal architect at the Cloud + Data Center Division of Fortune 500 technology provider Insight Enterprises,outlines steps that organizations can take to minimize cloud overhead, optimize cloud management and make the most of their cloud journey.
Assigning an internal cloud architect or outside expert to oversee your cloud efforts can help prevent a stall at the lift-and-shift stage. A dedicated cloud champion can be instrumental in overcoming cloud inertia by creating a roadmap for advancing your cloud initiatives, defining the technology and business benefits of each project, and identifying new cloud offerings that can help trim costs and/or streamline operations.
Asset management and change management processes developed to support three- to five-year maintenance cycles don’t fit systems where: a) public cloud infrastructure is deployed in hours or days; b) feature updates can be released weekly; c) developers may spin operating systems up and down dozens of times as they test projects; and d) the shift from CapEx to OpEx affects both hardware and software license tracking. Optimizing operations to fully use the cloud requires adjusting governance processes to accommodate these shifts, including establishing procedures to fast-track decisions by your Change Advisory Board (CAB).
Nearly 70% of IT leaders experience higher-than-expected public cloud costs, according to a recent IDG survey. Cost overruns for roughly half that group range from 51%-100%. While business factors like mergers and acquisitions contribute to those overages, many causes such as unanticipated data egress charges, failure to resize workloads based on performance and usage requirements and failure to advance beyond IaaS to more mature cloud migration strategies are within IT’s control. Close monitoring of monthly costs can flag these unexpected bites out of the IT budget and trigger corrective action before they take an undue financial toll.
