By Wilson Fernando
Three Steps to select the right Cloud Service Provider for your organization.
Aligning IT Strategy with business outcomes is a top priority of CIO’s. Most IT strategies, involves a focus towards digital transformation which demands a robust Cloud migration Strategy. In spite of the significance of cloud migration, there is a growing absence, of careful vetting and rigor during the selection of cloud service providers.
We are witnessing a wave of digital optimization, IT modernization and new digital business models, commonly referred to as Digital transformation. A pivotal part of IT modernization, includes a move towards cloud computing. According to a recent *Gartner press release, “the worldwide public cloud services market is forecast to grow 17% in 2020 to total $266.4 billion, up from $227.8 billion in 2019”.
In recent years, adoption of cloud has grown rapidly; this has led to an increase in the number of cloud service providers, that spans from large IT consulting organizations to a gradually developing assortment of niche local providers. In spite of the strategic importance of ‘cloud migration’ there is an absence of careful and rigorous vetting of cloud service providers. As a consequence, it has led to inefficient cloud migration decisions, especially around compatibility, vendor lock-in, cloud service model, cloud deployment model and cloud platforms.
For, organizations who are currently looking at reducing, their on-premise compute footprint by exploring a move to Cloud, an inevitable step is to select the right ‘cloud service provider’. This involves three steps: 1) Selecting a Cloud Service Model, 2) Selecting a Cloud Deployment Model and 3) Selecting a Cloud Service Platform.
The first step is to select a cloud service model. During this step, we need to determine the right type of cloud service model. Our choices are Software as a Service aka SaaS, Platform as a Service aka PaaS or Infrastructure as a Service aka IaaS.
In SaaS, the provider manages all the details that go into keeping a complex application running. This requires the least in-house IT involvement. Some of the examples of SaaS include Dropbox, Salesforce, and Google Apps.
In PaaS, the organization is responsible for internally managing the application and data. Rest of the layers are externally managed. Some of the examples of PaaS include AWS Elastic Beanstalk, Force.com, and Windows Azure.
In IaaS, the organization is responsible for managing the application, data, middleware and OS. Infrastructure is externally managed. Some of the examples of IaaS include Google compute Engine, AWS EC2, and Rackspace.
Secondly, we need to choose the right cloud deployment model. This involves choosing from one of the following: Public cloud, Private cloud, and hybrid cloud.
Public Cloud: The key benefit of public cloud is its scalability. Due to this the provider can offer better service at a lower price. The scale allows the provider to afford skilled people and state of the art technology. Services are available on demand with capability to dynamically allocate resources. Typically, such providers are spread across multiple locations, which improves resilience. More importantly, challenges with power supply, telecommunications, and disasters can be efficiently managed when there are geo-dispersed data centers. Since the responsibility for data and security lies with the organization; an evaluation of compliance and security risks is mandatory for public clouds. A good place to start is by verifying if the service provider is certified by ISO and compliance standards organizations.
Private Cloud: This platform is designed to be used exclusively by a single organization. The location can be at the business premises or at a data center managed by a third-party cloud service provider. Private Clouds offers visibility, scalability, and reliability; One of the keys selling point of private cloud, is that it offers tighter control over security, data privacy and compliance. This is a popular option for large financial or government organization who deal in secured and confidential data.
Hybrid Cloud – This computing environment is a mix of public and private cloud with orchestration/connectivity between the cloud platforms. This is a creative solution for organizations who have complex business requirements. It’s an attractive option, because organizations can benefit from a flexible deployment to a public or private cloud, and as a result leverage the enhanced scalability of public cloud, while ensuring the required security through private cloud.
Choose a cloud service platform based on business requirements and the cloud platform’s pricing structure, data security, data center location, down time history, onboarding process, technology advancements, certification, standards and reliability. Additionally, look at Key strengths, features, services, Hybrid cloud options, compute, storage, database and networking capabilities. There are many options to choose from, however the ones who make it to the top three cloud platforms are AWS, Azure and Google.
Looking at the top three it is apparent, that AWS continues to earn its number one position. This is because of the plethora of functionality and capability it provides to their customers. Its large and growing infrastructure provides economies of scale and gives them a price advantage.
Meanwhile, Microsoft is moving quickly to fill the gap with AWS. They are continuing to make investments in enhancing the Azure cloud platform along with invigorating its Hybrid cloud offering. Microsoft has an edge with customers who are currently invested in Microsoft technology and hence will continue to be a strong number two to AWS.
Whether Google can position itself as a strong challenger to AWS and Azure would depend on the work they do to attract the enterprise market. Under Thomas Kurian’s strong leadership, Google is on the upward trend with $2.78 billion revenue in Q1 2020; which is a 52 % jump from $1.83 billion in Q1 2019. Their strength in the open source community, big data, machine learning and kubernetes expertise makes them a force to watch for in the coming future.
As a final point, if your organization is considering moving to the Cloud, you need to start by performing a comprehensive cloud migration assessment that focusses on the heart of the organizations business strategy, brings awareness to the business problems and outlines why cloud is the right solution. Recently, we have seen an upsurge in cloud investments from our clients, as they realize the limitations of their existing technology stack, and recognize the impact of COVID-19 on their businesses. To guide such clients, we developed a cloud assessment framework, that is designed to help organizations, transition to the cloud. A few months ago, we decided to send the “cloud assessment framework” to our prospective clients and received positive feedback on how it organized their strategic cloud dialogue. We would love to share this framework with you. In order to receive the free complimentary ‘cloud assessment framework’, please send an email to wilson@systemian.com with the subject “cloud”.
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* Gartner Press Release “Gartner Forecasts Worldwide Public Cloud Revenue to Grow 17% in 2020,” 13 November 2019. https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2019-11-13-gartner-forecasts-worldwide-public-cloud-revenue-to-grow-17-percent-in-2020
