Over the last three years, IT decision-makers put a wide range of assets from software to infrastructure into the cloud. One of the main drivers for cloud adoption was cost. A cloud migration strategy offered IT professionals a diverse array of solutions for running services at lower cost. And the cloud’s pay-as-you-go model allowed enterprises to shift from a capital expenditure model to a strategy built around operating expenses.
But today, with more cloud experience, IT decision-makers are taking time to reflect and try to figure out if they got the return on investment (ROI) they had anticipated. Or did the cloud provider, cloud rep and even their own IT team sell them cloud solutions that were based on speculation?
Financial Models Can Be Cloudy
Last year we conducted a cloud survey and one of the study’s lightning rods was that 53 percent of all the customers we interviewed had cost models that were off (to their dismay) by more than 10 percent.
We also found that many of the organizations that switched from private to public cloud offerings were only utilizing their virtualization at about 25 percent. Getting the best out of your data center means maximizing your virtualization. A perfect scenario would be utilizing your virtualization up to about 99 percent.
Cloud Planning Services Are Key
With the cost of cloud computing becoming clearer, and in response to organizations getting low returns on their cloud solution investments, we decided to host a series of workshops. Simply put, the discussion typically focuses on what’s going to stay on-prem and what will leave for a new public cloud home. We can help shape an actionable cloud migration strategy with one-day or one-, three- or seven-week cloud consulting engagements. Or, if you prefer, build out your own custom consulting engagement based on scope, activities, deliverables and fees tied to your business objectives.
Cloud isn’t the answer for everything, but having a roadmap helps you get the best out of it. Planning for entering and, most importantly, your exit strategy for leaving the public cloud at-will should be the benchmark of your success metrics.
Cloud Success Is on the Horizon
With proper due diligence and cost modeling, organizations can pick and choose from a wide range of cloud solutions. Open stack, enterprise, public cloud, private cloud or any combination, we believe decision-makers can now pull from three years of insight, data and information to implement cloud solutions that cut costs and raise revenues for an increased ROI.
Let us help you better utilize your cloud deployment. Get started by reaching out to you CDW Account Manager to schedule a Cloud Consultation today.
