We’re cloud specialists who help reduce IT costs and improve performance on Azure and AWS.
You’re probably in your element when it comes to putting together specifications for servers, considering all the parameters involved to generate an accurate price, so you might expect that pricing up a move to the cloud and ongoing cloud costs would also be a reasonably straightforward task to complete. However, this isn’t always the case, delivering IT Cost Savings is part of the process of architecting the solution that requires real world cloud optimisation in order to ensure ongoing performance meets your needs.
There are tools available (including ours) that help to manage pricing, but proper optimisation of the cloud platform requires deeper analysis of usage and consumption to balance services correctly.
But how easy is it and more importantly, will using those tools give you a true price?
The reality is that in the process of delivering IT Cost Savings through cloud optimisation there are significantly more variables than you think. If you break down some of those processes and compare, you start to understand the scope of the task to price a move to the cloud and ongoing costs.
Let’s take an example – changing the location of physical servers to a new room might entail evaluating power supply, networking, air conditioning, and then moving the servers. Whereas a move to the cloud requires you to think about every aspect of running the server, the predicted demand over time and expectations of performance. Each and every one of these decisions will almost always impact on the cost in one way or another too.
In a simplistic description, it’s more than just going back to the drawing board to reassess infrastructure. You must consider everything you need to do that and how much of it you will consume to do that.
Think about cooking. If you were planning to cook a Sunday roast, in the physical world, you would work out how many you’re cooking for and go out to buy your meat and veg and then you’d go home to start cooking.
In a cloud environment, you have nothing in place – no oil, spices, trays, foil, utensils, cooker, power source or even the kitchen. In the cloud, you must build from a blank canvas.
Next, you consider your ongoing costs. How often are you cooking and need the power switched on? How often will you have guests, and will they eat more than expected?
Moving from a physical to cloud infrastructure for even one application or service means everything you took for granted is gone and you must start from the very beginning, crafting an architecture that achieves the required performance today, with the versatility to scale for tomorrow.
It now starts to become clear that a pricing tool will never be able to deliver a complete answer. And in fact, it’s not going to help you manage your costs going forward either.
You cannot set a budget on your cloud account. If the price of your cloud storage region has skyrocketed, you won’t know until your monthly bill lands!
Mastering the cloud concept – understanding technical jargon, having lots of practical experience, gain industry recognised certifications, building intricate infrastructure and delivering meaningful IT Cost savings through optimising platform performance – is an in-depth process that takes time and dedication.
The cloud services team at igroup sit regular exams and technical assessments to stay abreast of the latest cloud developments. But that isn’t enough. Once you pass a test, it’s almost out of date.
That’s why our team constantly read up on white papers, webinars and news from the Microsoft and Amazon partner channels. We believe this qualifies them as cloud optimisation experts who are ready to help you modernise your infrastructure and migrate applications and data to the cloud.
If you haven’t put any infrastructure in place yet, then our best advice is to talk it through first with an experienced provider first. We can’t emphasize that enough. We hate seeing customers wasting money.
Once the infrastructure is in place, it becomes more complex to unravel and resolve, and you may never achieve a perfect environment. Involving an experienced cloud architect at the beginning of the process ensures both flexibility within the environment and costs going forward.
If you’ve already put, or in the process of putting an infrastructure in place, then you may want a second opinion if it’s not working out or you have doubts. You’d probably be surprised how many businesses do ask for a second opinion on their current provider. It’s prudent to sanity check a large project to ensure it’s on track, moving down the right route, and not costing more than it should.
igroup gives just as much attention to both new and existing customers when it comes to delivering IT Cost Savings through cloud optimisation too. To us, you’re not just another customer. The technical team prides itself on knowing each customer’s environment in great detail, understanding the background and needs of the account. We’ll be able to advise exactly where you can make saving based on your business priorities.
Are you looking to reduce your cloud costs, optimise your existing cloud infrastructure performance, want a provider that treats your infrastructure and expense like it was their own, or have a chat about your cloud plans? Phone 0203 697 0302
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