The need to support both existing and new infrastructure and applications seamlessly is key to every business. As capital expenditures shrink and operational expenditures expand, you’re looking for solutions that reduce expenses, accelerate revenue, and enhance the customer experience on your terms with complete flexibility and control.
OPEX and the Cloud
Migrating to the cloud with some of your business applications is more than likely on your radar today – and as you start to migrate to the cloud, you need to answer questions about the resource you are replacing – will this save you on expenses, and if so, how much?
- How many hours will the application run each month?
- How much network traffic is allocated and where?
- What is the size of storage being used today and how to plan for future?
While on-premise infrastructure and data center hardware has its place, the cost savings (up to 20% per year) that companies can gain from cloud models represent a significant advantage in many applications. Key to these discussions are your “refresh” of assets (timing) and can there be a cap and grow strategy for certain applications and workloads which will allow you to maximize your current investments and to plan for the future. Plus, the ability via a control panel to easily turn up and turn down services on your schedule.
Now, no one is saying that eventually companies will stop buying servers and other IT hardware. But the as-a-service model makes a lot of sense for IT infrastructure. With the CAPEX model, an IT department is forced to project what its technical needs will be three to five years down the road, and then buy all of that resource in advance. That means companies are buying hardware – and maintaining it – even though they won’t use for years.
Providing Visibility into Virtual and Physical Servers
You want to work with a cloud provider that can also give you highly detailed visibility and control into the health and performance of your ever-changing network, including virtual servers or physical ones, cloud environments or local data centers. Infrastructure devices and applications can all monitored in the same place — allowing access from any system or mobile device, giving you the ability to view the status of your network anytime, anywhere. Key to this evolution is the ability to have the control at your desktop for self-service administration and with security to create a positive outcome for your environment.
You can have a flexible approach to IaaS, you just need to find the right partner and solution that give you all the performance, reliability, and scalability that got you excited about cloud IaaS in the first place.