Soaring into the Clouds the Right Way

With Gartner predicting that 2019 global IT spending to increase 3.2 percent to $3.76 trillion with as-a-service fueling everything from data center spending to enterprise software, about halfway through the year, it makes sense to look into the economies of cloud, how to best get there and how to select a provider. Once a provider, always our provider is no longer a true statement. Consumers are increasingly comparing options from various providers to determine which cloud provider or even in house clouds will be the best for their applications. According to a recent survey by Kentik which covered 310 technical and business executives at AWS re:Invent, 97% said they were using AWS (obviously), but 35% said they were also using Azure and 24% said they use AWS and Google together.

It is a given that at least something you do will jump to the cloud. It is more important to know how, what and when to get in there. Cloud is a great equalizer. It allows companies to leverage services, security, and facilities without having to have internal personnel and resources to do so. However, in a recent AFCOM poll, 49% of companies reported that they would be spending on their own data centers. So why isn't everything going to the public cloud? 

For one thing, the cloud is a shared responsibility environment. AWS states that they are responsible for security of the cloud, but those using it are responsible for securing what is in the cloud. According to skyhighnetworks.com "the average organization has 2,200 individual IaaS misconfiguration incidents in the cloud." Seems high, right?

A NetEnrich survey said that 72% of companies are making cloud security as their top priority moving into 2019. The need for a secure launch brings into focus two cloud implementation methods. First is to hire and/or train your staff, the second is to utilize the services of cloud implementation specialists. Or in some cases, you may choose some combination of the two. Just like the cloud is the great equalizer, it is essential to be sure that the tools available are being used and implemented correctly. It is funny how many companies pay people to do implementations in their own environments, but feel comfortable enough NOT to do so in the cloud.

Make sure you know what you can comfortably put in the cloud. If you don't know how to evaluate this, hire someone to assess your IT environment and strategic business goals. It's imperative to take a good hard look at availability requirements, risk, costs, and long term planning. It's rare to jump all in the cloud at first. It's not always wise, either, unless you are starting out in the cloud. It is prudent to look at End of Life cycles for equipment that may not have depreciated, lease requirements, migration times, testing time, business needs, and training for those using anything that will look, act or feel differently than what they use today. Throw on top of that delivery models, disaster recovery/business continuity and security, and it seems like a lot to take in and plan!

Any cloud migration plan should include a full examination of the environment as it is at the time the desire to move to cloud begins. There should be a thorough inventory of all software assets, licensing, databases, dependencies, security and departmental requirements, for instance, mobile accessibility needs. Work with your current software providers to see if cloud aware or cloud-based versions are available and determine if they are better suited to host them, or if that is something you wish to tackle internally. In some instances, that may be a hybrid or shared environment. Map out what is moving and be aware that this will be an iterative process. 

Cloud migration services come in handy here. Cloud integrators will help you understand the billing ins and outs, learn how to make the best use of utilization time economies, instance optimizations and templates to make things easier and hold your hand through the migration providing critical knowledge transfer at the end of the project. They will help with security and set up best practices either using your current security databases or help develop new user and group policies to streamline the process. 

The best cloud service providers will be vendor agnostic and well versed in various cloud platforms and their ins and outs. This knowledge will help assure that you don't get stuck somewhere you don't want to be but rather ensure that you are where you want to be in the most economical and secure manner. It's also important to note that the provider that is best for one application may not be the best for another. Different cloud vendors work better with hybrid applications and applications that are not cloud aware as the migration begins.

Most importantly, don't be afraid of the technology. Clouds are mature. While you may not move everything in, cloud is a great tool to have in your toolkit. Just remember, have to pick the right tool for the job! Sometimes you have to plan to buy the tool, then learn to use the tool and then be proficient with the tool.