For an experienced IT professional, putting together specifications for servers, considering all the parameters involved to generate an accurate price, should be straightforward and give the indication that a move to the cloud and manage ongoing costs would be a straightforward task to complete.
To support a cloud strategy there are many available tools that can help with planning and pricing a cloud environment
The truth is, that cloud planning is a more complicated affair, and the online tools – including those provided by Microsoft and Amazon do not give a true price.
When you start to break down the various elements of cloud pricing and maintenance, the real complexity of both undertaking a move to the cloud becomes clear.
In a cloud environment, you have nothing in place, you must build from a blank canvas.
Moving from a physical to cloud infrastructure for even one application or service means everything you took for granted is gone and you must start from the very beginning, crafting an architecture that achieves the required performance today, with the versatility to scale for tomorrow.
It now starts to become clear that a pricing tool will never be able to deliver a complete answer. And in fact, it’s not going to help you manage your costs going forward either.
Mastering the cloud concept – understanding technical jargon, having lots of practical experience, gain industry recognised certifications, building intricate infrastructure and optimising platform performance – is an in-depth process that takes time and dedication.
Achieving Partner status means the team at IG CloudOps sit regular exams and technical assessments to stay abreast of the latest cloud developments. But that isn’t enough. Once you pass a test, it’s almost out of date.
That’s why our team constantly read up on white papers, webinars and news from the Microsoft partner and Amazon partner channel. We believe this qualifies them to help you modernise your infrastructure and migrate applications and data to the cloud.
Did you know: You cannot set a budget on your Azure account. If the price of your Azure storage region has skyrocketed, you won’t know until your monthly bill lands!
If you haven’t already put infrastructure in place yet, our best advice is to talk it through first with an experienced provider first. We can’t emphasise that enough, because the cost implications of an incorrectly priced cloud environment – potentially with the wrong types of virtual machine provisioned can undermine all the benefits that you could otherwise achieve.
Once the infrastructure is in place, it becomes more complex to unravel and resolve, and you may never achieve a perfect environment. Involving an experienced cloud architect at the beginning of the process ensures both flexibility within the environment and costs going forward.
If you’ve already put, or in the process of putting the infrastructure in place, then you may want a second opinion if it is not working out as expected. Many businesses do ask for a second opinion on their current provider to confirm that their project is both on track and on budget to meet their needs.
IG CloudOps gives just as much attention to both new and existing customers when it comes to optimisation too. Our technical team includes AWS Experts and Azure Experts and knows each customer’s environment in great detail, understanding the commercial needs of the business and also the technical needs that contributed to the choice of the cloud services used.
Our CloudOps provides detailed financial and usage information about your deployment that can be used to determine whether there are opportunities to reduce costs and improve efficiency. If you would like to talk to one of our certified experts about how we can help you protect your cloud investment contact us for more information
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