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If part of your strategic IT plans for 2023 includes accelerating cloud adoption, you’re not alone. A recent Harvard Business Review survey indicates that 67% of organizations accelerated cloud adoption during the past 12 months, and 81% say that cloud is important to their future strategy and growth.1 This widespread adoption of cloud operating models has been driven by the promise of more efficient, simpler, and more cost-effective IT operations. Unfortunately, many organizations find that they are not reaping the expected benefits.
The reality is, adding cloud on top of your on-premises IT environment actually increases complexity. Lack of integration and data access across these environments reduces efficiency. And unpredictable data egress costs from your cloud provider can break the budget without warning. According to Gartner, organizations that rush into cloud technology investments can overspend by up to 70% on cloud services without realizing the value they expected.2
In addition, not all workloads are appropriate for public cloud. For example, some legacy applications are too costly or complex to be refactored for cloud. Security, compliance, and latency concerns can leave business-critical applications tethered to on-premises infrastructure.
As a result of these roadblocks, 85% of organizations are currently running in hybrid cloud environments—incorporating at least one cloud alongside on-premises infrastructure—and 88% plan to maintain this approach for the foreseeable future.3
If your cloud strategy isn’t returning the results you’d expected, it’s not too late to turn it around. Fine-tuning your cloud strategy can help you combine the best of cloud with the best of on-premises IT to create a hybrid cloud environment that’s optimized to deliver the efficient, simple, and cost-effective IT operations you’ve been working toward.
HOW TO SHIFT YOUR FOCUS FROM “CLOUD FIRST” TO “DATA FIRST”
Applications and the business outcomes they support are driven by data. Thus, the journey to an optimized hybrid cloud operating model starts with shifting your focus from “cloud first” to “data first.” This requires taking a step back and looking at the bigger picture. At Focus Technology, we advocate for taking the time to understand how data moves through your organization and supports business outcomes, so we can help you determine optimum workload placement based on application needs and budgetary requirements.
We start by gaining an understanding of your data, analyzing your existing application landscape to discover how you collect, store, and use data—digging into the memory, storage, and networking and the security ramifications of each one, including who can access the data and from where.
When cloud is the right answer, but public cloud isn’t delivering the desired cost–benefit profile, we can help you explore your hybrid cloud options, choosing the right path to best meet your objectives. For example, all of the major hardware vendors now offer the ability to access private cloud capabilities delivered as a service in your own data center or colocation, managed for you by Focus Technology. These options can give you the flexibility to bridge the hybrid cloud divide with the best of public cloud, private cloud, and on-premises IT.
By fine-tuning your cloud strategy to optimize workload placement, you can start to recognize the benefits promised by hybrid cloud, such as:
- The scalability, flexibility, and agility of accessing resources on demand for growing workloads
- The ability to optimize costs for each workload, benefitting from the cloud OpEx model with public and private clouds while right-sizing your use of in-houseresources
- Optimized performance, with the flexibility to provide the right resources for each workload
- The resiliency, availability, and business continuity benefits of cloud storage options
- Data protection and compliance optimized for each workload’s requirements
FOCUS TECHNOLOGY: OPTIMIZE AND THRIVE IN THE CLOUD ERA
To help you thrive in the cloud era, Focus Technology offers a Cloud Optimization Assessment designed to help you fine-tune your cloud strategy with a data-first approach. Because we are vendor agnostic, Focus Technology can help you sort through the various options to help you build the most appropriate hybrid cloud environment based on your data and application requirements.
We can tie this into your entire journey toward becoming truly data driven by optimizing against the four prime principles of data:
- Store: Data center infrastructure, cloud, and backup and recovery
- Secure: Assessments, remediation, and security products
- Manage: Fully managed solutions
- Transform: Digital transformation, automation, data, and analytics
Don’t wait to find out how Focus Technology can help you incorporate hybrid cloud strategies tailored to your unique needs and requirements. Get in touch to schedule your free consultation—today.