Cloud Enablement

Companies, startups and enterprises are moving some or all of their apps, services, projects and infrastructures from on premise servers on to cloud-based platforms as the latter offers much more dynamic, accessible, scalable and cost-effective solutions that are greatly beneficial to all types of growing business. In the simplest terms, cloud enablement is the process of putting your business in the cloud. Cloud enablement entails using cloud services to create, deploy or operate your enterprise’s internet technology infrastructure, software, data, applications and other resources, instead of keeping it all on-site.

Cost and ROI of Cloud Enablement projects:

Essentially, there are 3 major aspects that factor into the equation: Cost Reduction, Productivity Enhancement and Revenue Transformation. More tangible cloud enablement cost-saving data suggests that organizations which adopt the public cloud model save anywhere from 14% to 40% (depending on the company size) of their overall budget, both capital and operational, according to Forbes and Gartner. These savings come as a result of:

Lower server needs.
Significant CAPEX (Capital Expenditures) savings.
Significant OPEX (Operating Expenses) savings.
More optimal person-to-server ratio (lower personnel requirements).
Lower Software and Hosting expenditure.

The Cloud enablement in three steps:

Plan the cloud
Build the cloud
Manage the cloud

Plan the cloud: During the planning phase, the various business requirements should be carefully determined to ensure that the final solution will not disappoint. Following this, the cloud architecture can be planned from where the technology solution can be determined. When this is done, the hardware and software can be selected and put into a High-Level Design (HLD). Once this is agreed by everyone, the Low-Level Design (LLD) can be produced which will be the blueprint for the entire solution.

Build the cloud: Cloud Enablement does not only mean implementing new technology but also migration of existing applications, configurations, data and much more. Due to the interdependencies, a careful migration plan needs to be developed that minimizes disruption. After each step, verification needs to take place and if the verification fails, then a fallback plan needs to be executed. Only with a detailed migration plan, expertise, tools, and processes will the cloud be built with success.

Manage the cloud: The cloud introduces an extra layer of complexity (the virtualization layer) that needs to be managed, on top of the physical hardware and traditional software. Therefore managing the cloud requires additional expertise not needed in a traditional data center environment. Simultaneously, because of virtualization, many operational tasks are simplified or even automated – which actually makes managing the cloud easier than managing the original environment. Provisioning, backup and restore, as well as disaster recovery, are just some of the tasks that are greatly simplified in a cloud environment. So while cloud management will require some additional expertise, overall the operation is far easier.