We keep hearing a lot about what the Cloud can do for you in terms of flexibility, management, and streamlining of operations. These are all valid and pertinent statements but, we do not hear much by comparison about what and how Cloud cost weighs in the equation of each organization’s initiative – and this is where a greater focus, transparency, and integration are required.
The flexibility “trap”
How do we interpret lessons learned on a variety of Cloud migration projects, lift-and-shift batch operations, and of course cloud native new initiatives?
It is often happening that, partly stemming from the mistaken belief that Cloud solutions are so inherently flexible, organizations start their Cloud journey or project assuming that any mistake in provisioning, architectural design, and prior assessment can be corrected after which while true in a specific subset of situations, increases the need for regular adjustments, leading to uncontrolled Cloud costs, overprovisioning, and initialization of separate projects to perform Cloud “rationalization” or, in simpler terms: cost control emergencies!
While major Cloud providers deliver a variety of tools, suggestions, and best practices to customers (such as the well-architected framework), they are not in a position to address what each organization needs, as that would require enormous resources from their end.
The Cloud has given us tremendous expansion opportunities but what has remained over time is that, as in the on-premises world, we are often “bound” by the decisions we make when designing and procuring our environment.
So how can we make this journey better?
Organizations need to take their Cloud steps in the context of their existing technological environment, which requires a thorough understanding of what already exists and how to fit the new landscape.
Being aware of how that new landscape is going to look in the next five years helps a lot – it ultimately leads to better decisions, better cost control, and less “noise”.
This also sets boundaries for new initiatives, which can be defined by using a variety of methods such as analyzing key factors – i.e.: compute performance, business expectations, SLAs, and others, combined with intense key stakeholder consultation (to optimize assumptions) and, more importantly, architectural design, which is one of the key pillars of successful and cost controlled projects.
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