Contents
Introduction
The cloud is no longer a thing of the future. It’s the here and now. Adopting a cloud platform will empower businesses to maintain a competitive advantage now and in the future. Across the globe, companies, startups, and enterprises are moving some or all of their applications, services, projects, and infrastructure from on-premises servers to cloud-based platforms since cloud service platforms provide highly dynamic, scalable and cost-effective solutions that benefit every business type. Successful cloud enablement enables an organization to reap all the benefits of cloud computing. This blog will explore what Cloud Enablement is, why businesses need to implement Cloud Enablement Services and when to use Cloud Enablement service providers.
What are cloud enablement Services?
Cloud enablement is the process of building an effective cloud environment tailored to suit the needs of an individual business. The cloud enablement process involves the analysis of an organization’s current IT landscape, along with the design, deployment, operation and management of a portion of or all of its IT infrastructure, software, and resources to one or more public, private, or hybrid cloud environment. Among other things, cloud enablement may also involve migrating servers, operating systems, databases, business applications, and more to the cloud.
Cloud enablement can be achieved by following a cloud strategy that aligns with organizational goals & vision, identifying the right cloud offering that defines the cloud’s functionality, development process, architecture, and governance model. We also need to navigate through the maze of options available for cloud enablement, such as public, private, or hybrid cloud environments.
The majority of businesses tend to use the public cloud. The public cloud is usually run by a third-party cloud service provider that offers a broad set of infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS) options to cover almost every business need. Alternatively, a private cloud is suitable for businesses that are concerned about privacy, and it can be hosted on-site or through a CSP.
The private cloud offers most of the capabilities provided by a public cloud with the security and control of on-premises IT infrastructure. In comparison, hybrid cloud combines the elements of public and private clouds based on your business needs and resources.
A hybrid cloud computing platform allows businesses to host their most critical workloads on their own premises and less critical workloads on third-party, public cloud providers, thereby enabling them to meet their regulatory compliance requirements.
Public cloud providers offer the three most popular cloud computing service models such as infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS).
IaaS: IaaS contains the basic building blocks for cloud IT, including servers, operating system software, storage, networking infrastructure, data center space. In many ways, IaaS resembles the traditional IT resources providing the highest level of flexibility and management control. Instead of building an on-premises data center, you rent physical IT infrastructure to create your own remote data center on the cloud.
Paas: PaaS offers a cloud-based platform that enables developers to develop, run, and manage applications without the upfront costs, complexity, and inflexibility of building and maintaining on-premises. It hosts servers, networks, storage, software, operating systems, and databases in its data center.
SaaS: SaaS is an on-demand, ready-to-use, cloud-hosted application software solution in the cloud that can be accessed online or via vendor APIs for a fee. With SaaS applications, the vendor fully manages the application, runtime, middleware, operating systems, virtualization, servers, storage, and networking.
Why should businesses implement cloud enablement?
Today, cloud enablement services have become a necessity for all businesses as it creates new business opportunities, brings about a significant transformation in the way businesses operate and enables them to gain the edge over their competitors. Here are some of the reasons why businesses need to implement cloud enablement services
Cost-effectiveness: Without cloud enablement, every workstation in your office will require advanced hardware, a high-speed processor, large memory, and graphics – a massive expenditure. In contrast, Cloud enablement reduces upfront costs of investing in facilities, hardware, utilities, and licensing. Pay-per-use models enable organizations to pay for only the computing resources they use.
Scalability: With cloud enablement, businesses have the ability to scale up and down IT resources as business needs vary. Furthermore, cloud infrastructure can be scaled as needed with workloads fluctuations.
Flexibility: Cloud services can be scaled to fit users’ needs, customized to their specifications, and accessed anywhere with internet access.
Collaboration: Worldwide access guarantees ease of use and remote accessibility, which means teams can further enhance their collaboration from widespread locations.
Speed of innovation: Developing in the cloud offers the agility to respond swiftly to market needs by rolling out new applications, products or services quickly.
Accessibility: Cloud enablement empowers businesses with the ability to access cloud-based applications and data via virtually any device with access to the Internet.
Regular updates: Cloud Service providers offer regular updates to their services to enable their users the most up-to-date technology.
High availability: Cloud providers are typically highly reliable, providing uptimes of up to 99.99%.
In order to truly adapt to the ever-changing business landscape, businesses need to leveraging cloud technologies. Cloud enablement offers numerous benefits for businesses, including diverse offerings and agile features that empower businesses to implement cloud enablement services to optimize IT and business operations.
When to Use Cloud Enablement Services ?
mat A cloud enablement process must not be imposed. Instead, it should happen naturally. There are numerous potential obstacles that can cause difficulties with the transition process, leading to delay and reasonable & valid hesitation among executives of companies that are considering cloud migration.
Let’s look at a few of the potential pitfalls common perceived to cloud adoption:
Integrating old data with cloud applications
In many enterprise organizations, legacy systems & applications, which form the core of their operations, are difficult to migrate into cloud-based systems due to the challenges of connecting them to new cloud-based systems. Data that has been uncategorized for years is difficult to place because employees and technology supporting the system have changed so many times over its lifetime that it makes it very difficult to create a new architecture and optimize the data. Integrating the old data with cloud applications can become an arduous task and delay the entire transition process.
Need for new IT talent
Transitioning to the cloud requires developers to have specific IT skills, and as a result, bridging this skill gap can be challenging when migrating to the cloud. Often IT leaders struggle to find appropriate skills to support cloud initiatives within their organizations.
Security and compliance adjustments
Businesses may need to alter their security and compliance procedures to migrate to the cloud, and they must comply with new standards and buy licensing based on their industry or geographical location. Developing a comprehensive security clearance system is imperative for various levels of users who have access to cloud data, otherwise, there will be severe consequences.
Time and cost of migration
The process of data migration is resource-intensive and requires a lot of bandwidth and computational power. As a result, it may prevent the company from migrating to the cloud, causing them to continue to use a local server. Even though cloud storage has been generally considered to be more cost-effective than local storage, it is imperative to accurately calculate the actual cost of a cloud migration, which goes beyond the cost of cloud storage.
Downtime
Downtime is the worst nightmare for any business that uses cloud, having everything online seems great until your connection fails.
It is essential to keep these potential pitfalls in mind when choosing to implement a cloud enablement process. A cloud enablement service provider can help businesses overcome all the pitfalls mentioned above and make way for the entire process to become a success. Transiting to the cloud has challenges that are different for every organization, and there is no single solution that will work as one-size-fits-all. In order to implement cloud enablement that is typically offered by cloud service providers or cloud computing solution providers, businesses need to develop cloud strategies that guide businesses to cloud enablement through strategies, roadmaps, planning, build cloud’s architecture, frameworks, and expert guidance.
Conclusion
The benefits of moving your business IT landscape to the cloud are evident now more than ever, but the challenges are daunting. Transition to the cloud can be complex, expensive, and time-consuming if not done correctly. Suppose you’re considering moving to the cloud but are hesitant because it seems too complex or you don’t have the time to sort it out. In that case, it is imperative that you acquire the right expertise and tools to successfully deploy a cloud computing strategy you need cloud enablement service. Sparity is one such Cloud Enablement service provider that simplifies the cloud enablement process for companies with complex requirements that might not be able to migrate themselves.
Sparity delivers reliable, secure, and compliant cloud enablement services that include consultation, implementation, migration, maintenance based on tons of experience gathered by building several varieties of cloud environments and successfully migrating numerous on premise applications to the cloud for different clients.
