Cloud migration is an excellent example of ROI-driven decision-making.
More often than not, measuring ROI can help make the move to the Cloud and become an important factor in choosing the right Cloud platform to migrate to. According to a recent report by Future Processing, 12% of respondents indicated that Cloud is the most impactful area when it comes to increasing the ROI of IT projects.
Migrating to the Cloud is less of an all-or-nothing proposition than business leaders first imagined. For instance, it can be divided into sub-processes, with some parts of the business providing better returns when held on-premise or in-house, while others benefit significantly from the switch by improving performance and lowering costs.
Affordability is the Foundation of Scalability
Scalability is one of the Cloud’s distinguishing features and the primary driver of its growing popularity among businesses. Cloud scalability refers to increasing or decreasing IT resources in response to changing demands. Existing Cloud computing infrastructure can be used to scale data storage capacity, processing power, and networking. Even better, scaling can be accomplished quickly and easily, with little to no disruption or downtime.
Businesses can avoid the upfront costs of purchasing expensive equipment that may become obsolete in a few years thanks to Cloud scalability. Organisations pay only for what they use, reducing waste. Cloud scalability enables IT to respond quickly to changing and growing business needs, including unexpected spikes in demand. Even small businesses now have access to high-powered resources that were previously prohibitively expensive. Companies are no longer hampered by outdated equipment — they can easily update systems and increase power and storage.
However, cutting costs isn’t always the best strategy and might have a negative impact on a company’s health. That is why it is critical to conduct a thorough Cloud cost analysis to determine the cost impact of each Cloud service utilised by a company. Only when executives understand where their Cloud budget is going and how it affects revenue, customer retention, and overall profitability will they be able to make educated decisions about how to streamline operations, look for new opportunities, and make other critical decisions about the company’s future and the Cloud solutions deployed to achieve it.
Managing Migration Costs
As businesses embark on their digital transformation journey, they may encounter several unexpected challenges that force them to surpass the initial budget. The best Cloud migration cost-cutting tips are to right-size Cloud infrastructure from the start, use reserved instances for stable and predictable workloads, opt for managed services and remember to budget these expenses, establish cost visibility, and, most importantly, avoid analysis paralysis when looking for the lowest fees.
A common misconception is that organisations can save money by delaying Cloud migrations and focusing on on-premise environments that they have already paid for. On-premise data centres, however, require continuous operational support in the form of labour, utilities, leases, and licences to maintain systems, manage refresh cycles, and combat outages. Cutting costs in any of these areas can lead to expensive issues. Furthermore, well-planned and targeted Cloud migrations not only help to reduce costs but also position the business to grow more quickly once a downturn comes to an end.
Organisations should prioritise migrating workloads to the Cloud that generate value, such as those that enable critical business initiatives like customer-support automation, utilise hardware that will need to be replaced or upgraded soon, or have significant operational overhead.
Leveraging the Flexibility of the Cloud
Prior to the rise of the Cloud, businesses that wanted or needed to increase the capacity of their websites or apps to host traffic would have to physically expand their servers, which was not only costly and time-consuming, but could also quickly backfire if a market change resulted in reduced IT requirements. These processes can now be realised through instantaneous, pre-programmed interactions with a Cloud server, thanks to technological advancements and much faster internet speeds.
Cloud Elasticity is one of the most exciting developments in Cloud computing. While scalability refers to the ability to respond to changing market and business demands in the medium to long term, elasticity refers to the process of pre-programming a dynamic response to short-term fluctuations in system demands in order to either expand or reduce Cloud usage.
These solutions, when combined, allow businesses to never pay for more data usage than they actually need, while also getting them to quickly respond to surges in demand without fear of their application or website crashing if too many visitors try to access it.
The Sky is the Limit
A scalable Cloud architecture is critical for business growth and helps organisations stay competitive. Businesses are migrating to the Cloud to take advantage of scalability benefits ranging from cost savings to flexibility. A recent report found that Cloud-based solutions achieved an average ROI 1.7 times greater than on-premises solutions. Measuring ROI enables Cloud scalability because quantifying the value of migration aids leadership in making the best decision on the best solution.
About the Author
Adam Gaca is Head of CloudOps at Future Processing. We are a technology consultancy and software delivery partner. Founded in 2000 in Poland as a software development company, we are an over 1000-people strong team who deliver end-to-end services, from vision to reality, to clients globally. We listen, advise, design and deliver world-class, user-friendly IT products for clients in an agile way. Using our own proven frameworks, we have worked on hundreds of software products for both SMEs and market-leading brands, including Fortune 500 companies.
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