Gartner expects global spending on the public cloud to exceed $332 billion in 2021, up more than 23 percent from 2020. Organizations are moving more and more workloads to the cloud in order to gain greater flexibility and operational efficiencies. According to a recent IDC CloudView survey, improving agility and security and standardizing the IT infrastructure were given as the top drivers of cloud adoption.
However, the cloud is fraught with pitfalls for the unwary. Not every workload can be moved to the cloud, and choosing the wrong cloud platform can create cost, performance, availability, security and compliance issues. Cloud migrations are complex, and many organizations lack the tools and skill sets needed to manage the cloud environment. In addition, cloud costs can add up quickly if workloads are hosted on the wrong platform.
Technologent offers a comprehensive suite of cloud consulting services that are designed to help overcome these challenges and maximize the success of cloud adoption. We help organizations determine which workloads should be placed in the cloud and develop a cloud migration plan that minimizes risk and business disruption.
Addressing Cloud Challenges
Although cloud service providers often tout the simplicity of their solutions, enterprise cloud migration projects are typically large and complex. Few organizations have the depth of expertise in cloud architectures to select, build and size the right solution.
Furthermore, many organizations implement cloud services in an ad hoc manner, deploying Software-as-a-Service solutions as needed and moving some non-critical infrastructure to the cloud. However, a piecemeal approach to cloud adoption can increase costs and risk while limiting an organization’s ability to capitalize on cloud benefits. Strategic planning and readiness services can help organizations maximize the business value of cloud adoption.
Of course, cloud challenges do not end with successful migration. In a recent survey conducted by Wakefield Research, a majority of IT decision-makers said they were uncertain how to best utilize the cloud to achieve their business objectives. Eighty percent believe that their organization’s leadership team underestimates the time and cost required to maintain resources in the cloud. Nearly half (43 percent) of survey respondents believe their in-house IT team is unprepared to address the challenges of managing cloud resources.
Technologent’s Approach
Cloud consulting services can generally be grouped into three categories — infrastructure, applications and governance. Technologent’s comprehensive suite of cloud consulting services encompasses all of these components as well as the operational requirements of the cloud environment.
We begin with discovery of all applications in the environment and a thorough assessment of the existing infrastructure. Each application is analyzed from multiple perspectives, including financial, technical and business requirements, operational impacts, and data sensitivity. We also consider any in-house IT skills gaps that might hinder cloud adoption.
Once we have identified the workloads to be migrated, we gather information about the various applications and develop a migration plan based upon availability requirements, performance characteristics and other critical factors. We select appropriate migration tools and carefully plan the timing of the migration with involvement from applications owners and end-users.
Finally, we assist in the discovery, documentation and design of automated workflows and DevOps toolchains to support the cloud environment. We also prepare DevOps teams for ongoing management of the cloud, helping them to automate as much of the environment as possible to improve uptime and increase efficiency.
Cloud adoption continues at a rapid rate, but many organizations lack the skills and resources needed to develop and execute a cloud strategy. Through its advanced consulting services, Technologent can help organizations maximize the success of their cloud initiatives.
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