How to evaluate the benefits of moving to the cloud
Of course, virtual infrastructure is not a novelty of this year. A whole market of IaaS providers has emerged in the world, whose services are used at almost all levels of business: from independent developers to large corporations.
Analysts specializing in this area confirm the fact that the main growth of global traffic falls on cloud services. And this trend is only gaining momentum.
/ Photo: Takayuki Miki CC
There are several prerequisites for such a rapid growth of cloud traffic: from the direct development of the “iron” component to the ubiquitous changes in business models. New technology companies are increasingly based on the speed of development that the use of virtual infrastructure can provide.
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The growing demand for IaaS and the emergence of an increasing number of providers ready to provide their capacity and expertise for rent, lowers the price bar and makes the cloud accessible to an increasing number of small organizations and independent specialists.
Today we get a situation where most of the employees of corporations and even government agencies are already taking full advantage of cloud services, but they are not even aware of this. Virtual infrastructure is already so naturally interwoven into our current reality, that for us (the end user) it looks like another convenient application on a smartphone.
It is worth noting the growth of the general culture of working with data. Thus, business and individuals are increasingly thinking about what data they transmit to their favorite applications and services, where this data is stored and who processes it. Similar questions and doubts from customers allow the entire IaaS market to develop.
Of course, the presence of local infrastructure, which is served by full-time specialists, is a big plus, if the budget of the company allows. In this case, the cloud can always be used for experimental development or storage of backup copies. Let's talk a little more about the economic component of the issue.
Any manipulation of the company's budget must be justified by economic expediency. When it comes to choosing between purchasing your own IT infrastructure, moving to the cloud, or a combination of these options, you should consider all the nuances and risks associated with potential costs.
How to evaluate the effectiveness of a solution? Here it is worth referring to reliable sources (research, analytics) and assess the situation as a whole. Next, you should pay attention to the assessment methodology offered by the IaaS providers themselves.
For example, experts at Rackspace recommend considering:
Many experts are confident that to evaluate the effectiveness in the full and most objective way will be obtained only in practice. Moreover, in the case of IaaS, the “vertical” cloud flexibility plays an important role in returning investments, when companies can get more resources to solve their problems at any time.
Often, moving to the cloud can be accompanied by various permutations within the company. For example, the reorganization of departments and the redistribution of responsibilities between employees. All this is definitely worth considering.
Earlier we talked about one of our cases when the high-load project Hotels.ru switched to IaaS. Says Dmitry Kuzma, CTO project:
As with other innovations, companies are not always ready to spend time evaluating all the pros and cons. Many prefer to wait until all competitors switch to this or that technology, others like experiments and all the latest.
By the way, most of our customers point out the possibility of conducting experiments as one of the favorite advantages of using IaaS. Whether it is running and testing new product features by running additional virtual machines, or building information security systems.
Analysts specializing in this area confirm the fact that the main growth of global traffic falls on cloud services. And this trend is only gaining momentum.
/ Photo: Takayuki Miki CC
There are several prerequisites for such a rapid growth of cloud traffic: from the direct development of the “iron” component to the ubiquitous changes in business models. New technology companies are increasingly based on the speed of development that the use of virtual infrastructure can provide.
')
The growing demand for IaaS and the emergence of an increasing number of providers ready to provide their capacity and expertise for rent, lowers the price bar and makes the cloud accessible to an increasing number of small organizations and independent specialists.
Today we get a situation where most of the employees of corporations and even government agencies are already taking full advantage of cloud services, but they are not even aware of this. Virtual infrastructure is already so naturally interwoven into our current reality, that for us (the end user) it looks like another convenient application on a smartphone.
It is worth noting the growth of the general culture of working with data. Thus, business and individuals are increasingly thinking about what data they transmit to their favorite applications and services, where this data is stored and who processes it. Similar questions and doubts from customers allow the entire IaaS market to develop.
Of course, the presence of local infrastructure, which is served by full-time specialists, is a big plus, if the budget of the company allows. In this case, the cloud can always be used for experimental development or storage of backup copies. Let's talk a little more about the economic component of the issue.
What does it give
Any manipulation of the company's budget must be justified by economic expediency. When it comes to choosing between purchasing your own IT infrastructure, moving to the cloud, or a combination of these options, you should consider all the nuances and risks associated with potential costs.
How to evaluate the effectiveness of a solution? Here it is worth referring to reliable sources (research, analytics) and assess the situation as a whole. Next, you should pay attention to the assessment methodology offered by the IaaS providers themselves.
For example, experts at Rackspace recommend considering:
- planned costs for renting a certain amount of cloud infrastructure;
- operational costs of adapting a new approach to current business processes;
- software license costs and depreciation.
Many experts are confident that to evaluate the effectiveness in the full and most objective way will be obtained only in practice. Moreover, in the case of IaaS, the “vertical” cloud flexibility plays an important role in returning investments, when companies can get more resources to solve their problems at any time.
Often, moving to the cloud can be accompanied by various permutations within the company. For example, the reorganization of departments and the redistribution of responsibilities between employees. All this is definitely worth considering.
Earlier we talked about one of our cases when the high-load project Hotels.ru switched to IaaS. Says Dmitry Kuzma, CTO project:
The whole beauty of the cloud is realized when the traffic on the site increases tenfold before the holidays and the power needs to be urgently raised. At the dawn of the service, this caused a natural panic and an emergency, and now the issue is solved by adding virtual processors and IOPS to the disk system. As soon as the peak was asleep and, according to predictions, repetitions are not foreseen, we disconnect the temporarily allocated capacities in order not to pay extra.
Conclusion
As with other innovations, companies are not always ready to spend time evaluating all the pros and cons. Many prefer to wait until all competitors switch to this or that technology, others like experiments and all the latest.
By the way, most of our customers point out the possibility of conducting experiments as one of the favorite advantages of using IaaS. Whether it is running and testing new product features by running additional virtual machines, or building information security systems.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/260515/
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