To get a cloud strategy, right is the most crucial step in the cloud adoption process. You can get it done by cloud consulting services only. They help organizations with cloud computing for cost-effective business growth that boost productivity and save costs and alleviate risk.
What is Cloud Computing?
Cloud computing is an ideal way to deliver applications to enterprises. It is the most preferred solution for companies that want to extend their infrastructure and launch innovations.
There are two meanings of cloud computing. It is commonly referred to as run workload remotely in the data center of a commercial provider over the internet. Cloud computing is also described based on how it works. It is a virtual pool of resources from computer to application functionalities available on demand. When the customer acquires cloud services, a provider fulfills there requests with advanced automation techniques than manual provisioning. The main advantage of this is agility. It means an ability to apply storage, abstracted compute and network resourcing to workload as required and tap into plenty of prebuilt services.
In simple terms, cloud computing allows need-based or on-demand access to computing services like databases, servers, software, networking, analytics, storage, and application over the internet. There are several benefits of cloud computing like cost-saving, improved productivity, speedy delivery, scalability, performance reliability, and flexibility.
There is a high demand for Cloud strategy consulting services. It is not surprising because of the adoption of cloud computing by the market. Cloud computing comes into the early mainstream of adoption because it earned market share and got accepted widely as the legitimate technology by most organizations. Therefore the dynamics of this cloud computing reflect different patterns of cloud adoptions.
Cloud Strategy
Cloud Strategy is a subset of IT or Information Strategy. It is a part of and supports a business strategy. This is a formal definition that shows how resources are allocated to cloud computing. In such a way that cloud computing is arranged to deliver discriminated value to the customers’ business.
There are many factors behind the improved interest in Cloud strategy. It ranges from starting failure using the cloud to achieve great success. The following cloud strategy descriptions are applied to each organization:
- With better cloud computing planning, good cloud computing implementation works out
- The organization who already began cloud adoption, but for greater success, they want to go back for completing cloud panning steps properly.
- An organization that struggles with their initial cloud computing and want to develop a new strategy to reset plans and overcome prior setbacks.
- The organization that achieved success through cloud strategy and want to refresh or renew its strategy for expanding or building on initial success.
- Urgently an organization requires cloud strategy because of the consequences facing wrong cloud computing. Cloud strategy is very important here.
These are the cloud strategy patterns that reflect how an organization, in general, adopts this technology, how conservative or aggressive it is adopting new technology, and how much maturity level its strategies are planning and executed.
How cloud strategy consulting works?
Today, many organizations are moving towards cloudstrategy consulting firms for cloud computing needs. Due to the cost-saving feature offered by cloud migration, there is no wonder in becoming cloud the most approaching standard of practice. When it is combined with colocation data and edge computing and shifts to cloud architecture, organizations get unprecedented IT flexibility.
Cloud Strategy Development
1) Current State
To start building the cloud strategy, first, you start with the evaluation of your current IT state. It means:
- High-risk up-front cost
- Expenses to get and keep secure
- For valuation more time
- Non-value added capabilities
- Business not aligned always
In this step, the capabilities of the organization regarding your IT should also be considered. How large is the organization, your global footprint, startup firm, or established business? All these help to determine whether you are capable of investing in cloud computing.
2) Desired State
After evaluating the current status of IT, the next step is to take time for considering what an actual IT solution looks is like. For example, your desired state is going to be:
- Low up-front risk and cost
- Built-in security certifications
- Agility improved time to value
- Focus on core competencies
- Understandable Gaps
You can easily identify the difference between a current and desired state. They are:
3) Cost inconsistency
- Security concern
- Focus on business
- Develop Initiatives
To understand the gap between current and desired state, you can bring technical and business initiatives to bridge that gap. Like:
- Achieve a competitive advantage in the market
- Lower the cost of IT infrastructure
- Adapt to changes coming the market quickly
Cloud Migration
Cloud Migration was a process when organizations’ applications, data, and other business materials moved from computers to the cloud. Cloud is the virtual pool on-demand that shares resources and offers storage and network services at a big scale. This is a bug process involved in cloud computing. A cloud consulting firm offers you this service in the best possible manner. The steps included are:-
1) Planning and Preparation
Before starting the actual migration, preparation is required. The details of preparation depend on the business. Still, there are some basic steps to be followed. First of all, you must ask yourself why you want to move to the cloud. There are many benefits but what your organization is going to benefits from must be clear.
Cloud migration services oversee the migration process perfectly. In a large migration, the organization must make technical decisions and plans. Therefore you need a specialist that is needed for the success of your project.
There are two ways to migrate your application; shallow cloud integration and deep cloud integration. When you move the on-premises application to the cloud without making or limited changes on the cloud server for running, the application is called shallow cloud integration. A simple application changes are enough for it to run in a new environment.
While modifying the application to take the full benefits of cloud capabilities is called deep cloud integration. It is simple to use, like auto-scaling or dynamic load balancing. It might be sophisticated to utilize computing capabilities without the server for the application.
2) Choosing the Cloud Environment
Before starting cloud migration, decide what type of cloud model you will adopt? Choose between a single cloud and a multi-cloud environment. A single-cloud environment can be achieved with a single cloud provider to the server. The organization can decide only one or all applications and services to migrate or not. This environment uses public or private clouds whichever offer better serves the current or future needs.
As workload grows,the organization can move to the cloud because there is an option to expand virtualized servers beyond the limits of a single cloud server. Often, many organization uses this single cloud to employ the cloud for a single application or service.
With a multi-cloud environment, organizations use different cloud services from multiple providers. It is used for different tasks to achieve the best result or for reduced vendor lock-in. It reflects the increasing acknowledgment of clouds that are not created equally.
Also, with multiple clouds, organization get minimized dependence on one provider which reduces the cost and increase flexibility. The service cloud offers are:-
- Infrastructure-as-a-Service or IaaS
- Platform-as-a-Service or PaaS
- Software-as-a-Service or SaaS
The services also include Storage, Information Process, Database, Integration, Application, Management, Security, and Testing-as-a-service.
3) Migrate Applications and Data
After proper planning, the process of migration should be done quickly and smoothly. It depends on the size of applications and databases. Top Cloud consulting companies use different methods to copy everything over. If there is less to migrate, then you need to copy the data over the internet connection. For long transfer times, the charges are more. They compress the data before sending or ship the physical drives to the services to reduce the cost of bandwidth.
During the migration process, security is a priority. Even temporary storage of data will be secure at the end destination. The cloud services allow access to different cloud migration tools. It can be used to help with migration.
When migrating to the cloud is finished, there will be other things to consider. Resource optimization is another important step. The cloud gets optimized and allocates resources statically. Then you will not take advantage of the strength of the cloud. When you move to the cloud, make sure the cloud migration services distribute resources to your application.
Cloud Consulting
A cloud consulting is the one who is capable of facilitating online remote employee collaboration, report duty and obtaining secured access to all important information. The best part of small enterprises is the benefit of focusing more on business activities and letting the cloud-based work of IT on top cloud consulting companies.
Among a lot of companies that provide an ever-growing variety of great cloud consultants, you can choose a one according to the service they provide.
1) Define the Cloud services they offer
Being aware of the cloud needs, they give you an idea about the type of service you seek. There are different cloud solutions based on software. If you want, they can give you more than the basic storage of data. A cloud consultant services provide various cloud computing solutions generally such as IT infrastructure in combination with on-demand access to applications, software, and virtual servers.
2) Cloud service is safe
Online security and safety are very important for any services when it about storing fundamental data of enterprises in a cloud. Cloud consultant offers several standard security measures to set into place. Moreover, they will need constant updates to prevent the heaps of malicious attacks that occur every day. The security of a cloud consultant is immaculate.
Their security measure includes anti-virus detection, routine security audits, firewalls, data encryption, and multiple user verification. To validate their certification, they do regular auditing of their company. Besides, they keep their track record safe regarding security. The cloud consultants do keep a background check of their employees to identify thieves or cybercriminals. The other question they can answer you is in regard to compliances with specific industry-related government legislation.
3) Secured data center
The security and location of the server and data center are very important. The data of the businesses are given the same importance as online safety. A cloud consultant always safeguards their client-server without allowing anyone to a break-in or get hands-on their sensitive data.
The cloud solutions ensure to protect its servers from all-natural disasters like floods, storms, earthquakes, and fires. They also provide a different kind of physical breach protection. The consultant must maintain an ISO27001 standard that indicates that they can bear up masses of security attacks.
1) Price Structure
When you aim to work with a cloud consultant, price matters. It is one of the facts you should pay an amount for how much you use. The consultants who ask upfront charges are said not to be trustworthy services. From the start, the pricing structure must be like pay and go. The costs they usually charged on an hourly, monthly, or quarterly or annual basis.
2) Accessibility of service
Cloud consultant services allow vendors to access their business data available in the cloud. You can log in to your login page through any exotic location at any time. They also allow to sign in using their own choice of devices like tablet, smartphone, or laptop.
3) Provisions
The most effective lock-ins of a vendor are less data portability. If your data cannot move from a provider to another, then you are said to be locked-in. Cloud providers offer data export and import functionality which is free and easy to use and easily available. If you are on a monthly contract, you can transfer your service to another. But it should not be time consuming, risky and expensive. Data portability is a single-most overlooked matter every client of cloud services that fail to look for.
4) Adjusts with expanding business needs
When business activities grow, cloud services must need to expand equally. To safeguard that the cloud service tent to be good and flexible with organizations. Some of the services offer a cheap rate per unit basis as you expand. If there is staff expansion too, then you have to ensure to add new users into their accounts effortlessly.
5) Client support
The best cloud consultant always looks like a high and efficient support system available. They are accessible online for customer support 24/7 and 365 days without any exceptions or holidays. Some of the organizations allow this for free, or charges are applied. But it is critical to have such support for you because you put your all-important business services into the cloud.
Even quality may vary, a cloud consultant firm offers an average time to respond and give a resolution. Besides, they give technical support by seasoned engineers and service representatives who can read or copy scripts without addressing issues individually. It helps you to save a lot of time while engaged in supporting services to resolve issues.
6) On-board process
After service is selected, you have to sign the deal with the consultant. You can sign in and configure that account. It also means to add employees as users. Some of them ask you to walk through an installation process.
Factors to Consider while Looking for a Cloud Consulting Firm!
An efficient cloud consulting firms hold great importance for all business organizations that want to expand their bandwidth. They take a holistic approach to creating a cloud adoption strategy according to the discreet business requirement of an organization. Here are certain factors to look into a cloud consultant:
- Sandboxes: It provides maximum security to your data transfer. It means the development of system, integration, and migration of your data.
- Backup of System: An experienced cloud consulting serviceswill always ensure your valuable data is backed up properly before doing the migration process.
- Configuration Logs: Every cloud consultant must maintain an SFDC log for tracking data transfer activities on the cloud. It will ensure the evaluation of the pending or completed task in real-time.
- System Access: Cloud consultants who flourish strong login credentials and clients are instructed to share it with a third-party or application should be considered as ideal. Also, it is beneficial for a consultant, when the security is at the top level and less effort required for preventing any security breach.
- Sign-offs: When a project is completed, signoffs are necessary. It is very essentials during any changes to come in the order. During important projects also signoff serves as a milestone for all organizations.
Cloud computing is becoming the best platform for IT leaders and business counterparts. With that growth, there is massive growth in the demand of cloud consulting firms. Both are inevitable and necessary. Those who make a move to the cloud on their own got bad surprises. To help you make the right move, preferably, you must hire a cloud consulting service.