A week ago you may have seen the announcement of our latest white paper – ‘How to Build a Better Cloud: Part One – Planning. Part Two, covering implementation will be published very soon. So now seems a good time to set out the main reasons why there has never been a better moment to start a digital transformation by moving to the hybrid cloud.
Patrick van der Wilt, Commercial Director EvoSwitch
There are many more reasons to take the cloud road, but here are what I regard as the top 10:
1. More flexibility: Cloud infrastructure scales up – and down. Your apps and data become accessible from any Internet-connected device. You can choose public, private, or hybrid storage offerings to suit
2. Tailored control: Set the level of control that suits you with as-a-service options, i.e. software as a service (SaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), and infrastructure as a service (IaaS)
3. Cutting-edge security: Virtual private cloud, encryption, and API keys help keep data secure with a growing array of plug-in security services. Also, network backups avoid loss of data through hardware failures
4. Major efficiencies: Putting DevOps in the cloud speeds time to market. You save hassle and cost on servers. And, of course, with pay as you go, you only pay for the resources you use.
5. Greater competitiveness: With the help of your Cloud service providers you can focus on the front end. You are guaranteed the latest tech and updates. And you can partner, create and shift workstreams and solutions faster.
6. The cloud train is leaving the station: In 2016 the cloud accounted for over 50% of IT spend (Gartner), and now, in 2017, over 50% of companies are operating in the cloud. According to McAfee, hybrid cloud adoption tripled last year, increasing from 19% to 57%.
7. Key concerns are being ironed out: Particular headway is being made in overcoming the key challenges of security and resourcing. According to Rightscale, concern about these two issues has dropped 4% and 7% respectively over the last year.
8. Less lock-in: Multi-cloud strategies are far more common, powered by easy-to-use vendor-agnostic platforms and marketplaces like our own OpenCloud
9. Better quality: Price-to-performance is generally excellent, with many publicly available league tables. Interestingly, these throw up many more high-performing providers than just the big IaaS providers.
10. Stronger support: As well as improved standards and clearer SLAs, there is a lot more analysis, piles of best practice cases, and very well-populated and user-friendly cloud user communities who will help you build your business case.
Further Reading
Gartner cloud usage stats and forecast (release) http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/3616417
McAfee Cloud Security Report on hybrid cloud surge
Rightscale 2017 State of the Cloud Report http://www.rightscale.com/blog/cloud-industry-insights/cloud-computing-trends-2017-state-cloud-survey
Some price to performance analysis: https://cloudspectator.com/
EvoSwitch How to Build a Better Cloud Part One – Planning: https://evoswitch.com/white_papers/build-a-better-cloud-part-1-planning/
EvoSwitch Commercial Director Patrick van der Wilt has more than 13 years of commercial experience in the data center market, having worked with TelecityGroup and IO. The success of his sales and marketing strategies is dependent on profound market understanding and insights into the implications of the latest commercial trends. View full bio
