No Grey Clouds Ahead – Only Hybrid Ones

We’ve come to the end of 2021, and another year of enduring the pandemic.?These?last?two years?have shown that?the business world in Asia?is?continuously?changing. Companies are more?digital,?right across the enterprise?-?from sales and services, even to?operational?tasks such as?procurement.?Remote?or hybrid?work is?a?norm. Resiliency?is?a?major theme?of every IT spend.???

The?cloud?has become?a natural choice for?infrastructure, and the numbers prove it.?Last year,?APAC’s?public cloud spending?rose by 38% to?US$36.4 billion. This?growth?rate is expected to continue,?for a spending?of?US$124 billion by 2025.??1 in 2 of knowledge workers globally will be working remotely by the end of this year too, says Gartner.?

With the?Omicron variant?now?making headlines,?the?continuing?disruptions and?unclear business?landscape?might?give business leaders?even?more to think about.?Have the investments made into the cloud made sense??Do we have visibility to the potential costs?from our cloud migration and adoption over the long term???

Now is the right time for leaders to?revisit past decisions and?reconsider where cloud costs can be optimized, so that they remain agile and resilient, forging ahead into the new year.??

THE REALITY OF CLOUD OVERLOAD?

We liken?cloud?usage within the enterprise?to?a household’s electricity consumption. Like how a utility provider?supplies?power?depending on?a household’s need,?organizations?should be able to?rely on a cloud provider?for?its IT infrastructure needs,?while benefiting from built-in capabilities like high availability, scalability, and secure infrastructure.?Cloud performance is built for remote access and operates under a flexible pay-as-you-consume model.?Bills stack up if you don’t?manage your cloud well.?

We’ve seen how?some?organizations are now having difficulties monitoring and managing consumption across their various cloud deployments,?or cloud sprawl as it’s called.?According to?Forbes,?30%?of cloud spend?globally?did not?lead?to productive?outcomes.?Imagine having a third of your?IT budget going down the drain.??

A way of?avoiding?wastage?is to use?cloud agnostic cost optimization tools that deliver granular, real-time visibility across the entire hybrid IT infrastructure.??

‘LIFT-AND-SHIFT’?BRINGS UNNECESSARY COSTS??

We saw that many organizations?in the?last year?or so?use?a “lift-and-shift” approach?for their cloud adoption.?Lift-and-shift,?as the name suggests, involves?“dumping”?on-premises workloads?into?the cloud.?This is a?stopgap?tactic?to?ensure?business services remain?available to?external users?and?a?workforce?that is suddenly distributed or?remote.?

It?may be tempting for businesses to?take the easy way out and?migrate everything to the cloud, but the reality?is never that simple.??

It?is technically possible to perform any business task in the cloud,?but?not?every on-premises workflow and application – in its present state or form – is optimized to do so. Businesses may face compatibility issues, such as the original code of applications running on outdated software.?Transmission?of data across different locations?is also a?major source of?unnecessary cost?in cloud and data management.??

One solution is for?enterprises?to?consider?which applications should be shifted back into an?on-premise?environment?and?modified for?the?new cloud infrastructure, or fully re-architected to work in any cloud environment.?We call this the?“Uplift and Transform” model.??

FIND THE PARTNER WITH THE RIGHT?PLAYBOOK?

As businesses?face?new?unseen?challenges?in the new year,?they?can?seek to be?financially prudent?in their cloud spend and?make?every dollar count.?A?good?cloud optimization and migration strategy?can?ensure?minimal disruption to data-dependent applications and?while?making it?easy on the pocket.??

To forge ahead in 2022 and beyond,?organizations can unlock the best of cloud and?truly?gain all the benefits of data?if they choose the right technology partner.