We are way past the point where enterprise leaders need to be convinced about why it is important to move their critical, if not their entire digital assets, to the cloud. In fact, Gartner predicts that by 2026, 75% of organizations will drive their digital transformation initiatives by leveraging the cloud as the underlying foundation.

Cloud computing has become a fundamental part of every digital initiative. The real challenge that enterprise leaders should be looking at today is not a debate on whether or not to move to the cloud but rather which cloud they should select to move into.

The Cloud Dilemma (Navigating the Different Configurations & Providers)

The worldwide SaaS spending is expected to hit a total of $197 billion by the end of 2023 (Gartner). But decision-makers are indeed facing a tough time selecting the right choice of cloud for their needs.

To begin with, they need to start evaluating whether a public, private, or hybrid cloud is the right choice for their cloud ambitions. The evaluation must consider factors like:

Every option has its own pros and cons that need careful assessment based on your business’s unique needs.

Once that is settled, the dilemma shifts to providers. Whether it is infrastructure, memory, performance, or scale, there are multiple providers across the globe that offer the same line of cloud services.

Amazon’s AWS, Microsoft’s Azure, and Google’s GCP may be the top three contenders. But in reality, thousands of providers in the SaaS space either leverage the top cloud providers to build their SaaS products or have their own dedicated cloud infrastructure.

So, how can enterprises leverage maximum ROI from their cloud investments when there is a complex web of choices?

Deciding on the Right Approach

Selecting from private, public, and hybrid cloud deployment is the first step in the journey to successful cloud implementation. To help with the decision, a careful analysis of your workload, governance requirements, and criticality of services should be conducted.

Choosing the Public Cloud

If there is minimal workload or high workload but only seasonal utilization and if there isn’t much of a governance requirement for data and transactions happening within your application, then the public cloud is a great option. It is especially good for businesses taking their first step into digital channels, as costs are comparatively low in the public cloud.

From a more technical perspective, the public cloud is perfect while your application is being built and tested by developers and quality assurance teams.

Also Read: The Love-Hate Relationship Enterprise CIOs Share with the Cloud

Choosing the Private Cloud

If your workloads are significantly high all through the year or if data security is primary to business continuity, then a private cloud is the best option. The private cloud allows enterprises to have a higher level of computing flexibility in their customizations. Businesses also get to choose their level of tolerance and resilience with dedicated hardware and network credentials.

This allows enterprises to balance costs and performance, but on the flip side, managing and orchestrating application components across multiple cloud environments can be an overhead.

Picking the Cloud Provider

Once you have finalized an approach for the deployment, the next step is to select a vendor. Offerings from top tech companies like Amazon, Microsoft, Google, etc., are always a safe bet for businesses. However, it is still essential to evaluate your core objectives in cloud migration before selecting a cloud vendor.

Factors like cost, projected scale of business, supporting services needed, regional presence guarantee in markets, and security need to be assessed. There may be several cloud vendors who may be offering proven cloud solutions tailored to your business’s domain. It is crucial to ensure domain expertise is factored in for the choices. This assures support for nuances and complex cloud configurations that your business’s digital ecosystem may have to endure in its cloud journey.

Getting Cloud Migration Right

Deciding to make a switch to the cloud on your own can prove immensely challenging. Mishaps could lead to entire digital services being crippled, resulting in the loss of both revenue and goodwill. In fact, proceeding without an expert advisory partner like i-Source may prove to be a high-risk approach.

Moving to the cloud or moving around different clouds is not an easy endeavor for businesses. Even if options for deployment are finalized and vendors shortlisted, there are other challenges and risks enterprises must investigate before going ahead with cloud migration.

Stay tuned for part 2 of this blog, where we will explain the risks and challenges of managing the migration process and how to get that right.