CLOUD COMPUTING SOLUTIONS

Every IT Executive I have ever talked to only has one thing on their mind. Can this solution bring value to our business?

They might not phrase it that way or be thinking that exact statement, but when questioned correctly about their objectives within IT, they all boil down to this point. Will this solution bring value to our business? There is absolutely no reason why when discussing “The Cloud” those same IT Executives won't be thinking the same thing.

Is "The Cloud" Right for Your Business?

The issues that “The Cloud” is causing are numerous, but to name a few that might be happening to you:

• Unrealistic expectations about “The Cloud”;
• LOB’s are bypassing IT and they often do the funding;
• IT is maintaining a silo for compute, storage, network, security, facilities, etc. slows down all build processes, these same build processes are manual and error prone;
• VM Sprawl is rampant;
• No real way to chargeback to the LOB;
• No capacity planning mechanisms; and
• The biggest complaint we hear is total lack of agility.

The constraints that IT is facing are driving more need for “The Cloud”. IT budgets are being cut, asked to do more with less, enterprise architects are hard to find and expensive, rigid operational procedures limit flexibility, power/space/cooling limit what can be added.

The promise of “The Cloud” is achieved when IT focuses on the application and not the infrastructure. “The Cloud” comes down to deciding if a SaaS Solution can solve the business problem or if you need to move to an IaaS Solution with more traditional management. Spotswood Consulting thrives on assisting customers with making this crucial decision and aligning your business needs with the promise of “The Cloud”.

Common Cloud Pitfalls

• Focus on infrastructure instead of applications (Cloud is ALL about the application, NOT the location of the infrastructure)
• Picking the wrong app (Not all apps belong in the Cloud)
• Forgetting cost of application re-architecture and migration (likely 10x the cost of the hardware and software)
• Relying on SLAs without reading the fine print (most Cloud SLAs are worthless)
• Not updating policies and procedures to take advantage of Cloud (Cloud is not about “good”, it is about “good enough”)
• Assuming that Cloud will save you money (unless you "reallocate" staff, it likely will not)
• Everyone has their own definition of Cloud, most Cloud providers aren’t selling architecture
• Very few good tools for managing and monitoring application utilization and performance in the Cloud

Once you know exactly where you stand in the market, how your clients perceive you, and where your areas of opportunity are it’s easy to go to the next step.

Contact us today to utilize our cloud computing solutions and move your business forward.

WHY CHOOSE US?

Benefits:

Line of Business/Business Units

• Enable end-user self-provisioning
• Reduce application development time
• Simplified IT System approval process
• Clearly defined predictable costs

IT

• Recoup Operational Staff time
• Enable staffing redeployment to strategic activities
• Reduce OpEx
• Decreased VM sprawl and provisioning time
• Automated reclamation of end-user resources

Executives

• Audit compliance
• Enable new products and services
• OpEx versus CapEx flexibility
• Increased budgeting accuracy

Procurement

• Not tied to any single vendor for hardware, hypervisor, or network
• Able to competitively bid across vendors
• Able to repurpose existing hardware to reduce procurement costs

Return on Investment:

• Ability to deploy Services in minutes instead of weeks or months
• Decommission and recoup compute capacity, storage space, and software licenses when no longer needed
• Leverage business software value in weeks versus years of home-grown application development
• Focus on applications instead of infrastructure