Get the most value from your Cloud investment

Discover technical and financial flexibility, efficiencies, and capabilities on the cloud that arent possible with on-premises IT infrastructure. Choose the right short- and long-term cloud solutions for your needs and get greater return on your cloud investment with key financial and technical guidance from Azure and best practises from top organisations.

Understanding what using cloud means to your business

There are three varieties of cloud. The public cloud moves your infrastructure from your data center to the cloud vendors facility. Private cloud creates an on-demand, virtualized infrastructure on your own premises. With hybrid cloud, some of your processing occurs in your private cloud and some in the public cloud, perhaps to support periods of high demand.

The cloud is also closely associated with the “as a Service” model of delivery. There are three major “as a Service” varieties. Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) delivers only the compute, storage, and networking capabilities on demand. Platform as a Service (PaaS) adds tools for developing applications in the cloud. Software as a Service (SaaS) offers applications on a subscription basis.

Your end Goal

You might be asking, what is cloud computing? Why are people moving towards the cloud and away from traditional systems of storing their data?

Cloud computing is the delivery of computing services over the internet, as opposed to on a traditional physical server.

But why is this better? Simply put, cloud computing gives you more control. Its also a more efficient, and cost-effective method of storing your data than traditional methods.

• Possibly the most important benefit of the cloud is that it is highly flexible. The cloud is both configurable and scalable. Cloud customers can easily adjust their demands depending on changing needs.
• Cloud-based applications and data can be accessed from virtually anywhere. This also means teams can collaborate worldwide.
• By using the cloud, businesses can avoid the upfront cost of owning and maintaining their own IT infrastructure, and instead can pay for what they use, when they use it.

Its easy to see why the cloud seems like the better choice for businesses. But implementing and executing a cloud strategy can seem daunting, especially if you have large amounts of sensitive data that needs to be migrated. We believe this process can be summarised into four key steps for cloud success.

Define your objectives

The first step should be determining what issues you want to solve by moving to the cloud. Collect data on how your data is currently stored and used, here are some questions you could ask:

• What is the running cost of your physical device and network admin?
• How much annually can you save on electricity costs?
• Is there a huge surplus of space that you are unnecessarily paying for?
• How often is maintenance required for hardwares?
• The downtime vs costs if your hardware fails?
• Time spend vs time that can be used elsewhere for upgrading hardwares, updating systems, patching applications.

A cloud solution could help with any of the above issues, and more. Moving to the cloud can also simplify deployments, for example, you can automate your infrastructure services and applications using pipelines, this helps reduce errors and increase efficiency along with Windows Azure to help you reduce operational costs and save time. By reflecting on these issues, you will create business goals that can be achieved via cloud solutions.