May 16
Cloud adoption is the implementation of a cloud-based computing environment for your organization. Depending on the applications that your organization uses, some of them may work best in the cloud — and by being operated in their ideal environment, can provide you with several of benefits.
In order to ensure that your applications are working properly and your end-users are having the best possible experience, you’ll also need to implement a cloud optimization strategy. This plan enables you to make changes to your infrastructure as the application needs evolve.
Below, we’ll discuss the benefits of a cloud optimization plan and how you can implement this strategy at your organization:
Benefits of a Cloud Optimization Plan
By having a cloud optimization strategy in place, your organization can:
- Enable innovation and efficiency. As more technological innovations become available, a cloud optimization plan can allow your company to take advantage of these — and their benefits — early on.
- Improve utilization. This plan also allows your organization to ensure your utilization is at-scale, rather than using too much or too little of your allocated resources.
- Provide visibility of current usage. By understanding your usage rates throughout the year, your organization can plan ahead to accommodate for increased and decreased usage.
- Reduce unnecessary cloud costs. By having an ongoing insight into your cloud infrastructure, you can reduce unnecessary staffing, utilization, and other related costs.
How to Develop a Cloud Optimization Strategy at Your Organization
While many organizations know that cloud optimization is important, C-Facts reported that “through 2024, 80% of companies will be unaware of their mistakes in their cloud adoption and will overspend by 20 to 50%.”
Cloud optimization is an ongoing process. Since your organization’s needs will change, — along with application infrastructure needs and other factors — it’s important to return to your plan on a regular basis to make updates as needed.
A Robust Cloud Optimization Plan
Each time you update your plan, it’s important to include:
- Cost analysis. How much is your organization currently spending? Is that within your budget? If not, what changes need to be made?
- Software assessment. What software and applications are your organization currently using? What is the necessity level of each? Are you using each of these tools to their full potential? If not, how can your organization utilize them more efficiently?
- Application performance. Are each of the applications running efficiently? Are internal or external users having issues with any applications?
- Continuous improvement strategies. What new innovations are you keeping an eye on? Have you implemented any new strategies since your last optimization update? If so, be sure to include those within this updated strategy.
There may be other factors to consider that are specific to your organization during your application-first digital transformation.
Work With Cloud Experts To Create an Application-First Approach at Your Organization
As more organizations move toward an application-first approach that helps businesses run applications more efficiently, it’s important to understand how these strategies can benefit your business.
A Multi-Generational Infrastructure (MGI) strategy allows organizations to update their infrastructure during their colocation contract. Since applications move faster than contracts, this strategy gives your organization the ability to shift your workload to the cloud or to colocation.
With the flexibility of MGI, you can change your infrastructure strategy as your needs change. In addition, by working with cloud experts to optimize your cloud infrastructure, you can have a number of additional benefits:
- Expert advice on how to maximize performance, security, and ROI.
- Professionals who can monitor operating costs of cloud resources and reduce surprise invoices through better visibility to running cloud costs.
- Extra support on policies designed to keep your infrastructure running costs low.
Foghorn Consulting, Evoque's cloud engineering arm, has slashed over 40% from customers’ AWS, GCP, and Azure bills — resulting in $100s of thousands in savings per month for our partners.
Ready to optimize your organization’s own cloud computing strategy? Contact a cloud expert today!
