How to select cloud services that meet your business needs?

Private cloud? Public cloud? Hybrid cloud? All too often, discussion of cloud services focuses on a particular technology or solution. The choice of technology should not be the sole criterion in the consideration of cloud and cloud services. Believing that cloud services automatically bring added agility, efficiency or savings would also be a mistake.

If technology is put in the driver’s seat in the transfer to cloud-based operations, the desired business benefits will be difficult to achieve.

A functional cloud service must be built on business goals

In setting goals for a cloud service, business should be the primary consideration. This enables you to identify the needs and targets that must be met by the cloud service and allows you to take any regulations that govern the sector into consideration. Such requirements may be related to the management and processing of business and user data.

In practice, this means recognising the business needs that the cloud technology must serve. Is the goal to develop a new service platform or to identify an optimised platform for the company’s existing applications? Or do you require both of these features?

These two cloud service scenarios alone involve vastly different needs and optimised solutions. In addition, you must be able to recognise the opportunities and limitations of applications that are critical to business, such as matters related to latency, technology, service levels and cost factors, and to make decisions on platforms that the applications will be run on.

The right platforming model ensures that cloud services match the intended use and help achieve set goals

The right platforming model is not just a technical solution but also a way of acting and thinking. It is all about functionality and finding an optimal cloud solution that is based on the company’s business needs and an understanding of the infrastructure behind the applications and the applications’ usage and workloads.

This enables the realisation of a solution that utilises the most suitable cloud technologies in line with the intended use of the applications and the goals set for them.

The solution must be optimised to achieve the desired benefits, whether they are related to innovation, cost-efficiency, the efficiency of operations or the quality of customer experience. It is essential to identify a method that offers the best benefits and efficiency with regard to each of these targets and requirements.

A cloud solution that meets the company’s business targets is typically a hybrid that combines various cloud technologies. A company does not require separate strategies for public and other clouds when it creates the right platforming strategy based on such a hybrid cloud. This enables it to pick and choose the properties that best promote the achievement of its business goals.

Our services for planning and realising a switch to cloud services encompass the definition of the customer’s needs and focus areas. To make the most of cloud services, it is essential to understand business and technological needs.

The first step is to analyse the existing IT environment and prepare plans for optimised cloud implementation. We realise migration and modernisation projects at stages in a controlled manner. Our understanding of cloud technologies and the needs of various business sectors, combined with experience of conventional applications and infrastructure solutions, help our customers get off to a flying start with their switch to cloud-based operations.

Whether you have just implemented a cloud solution or have used cloud services for a while, we can help you take the next step.

Read more: Making the most of cloud services by changing operating models

Behind every successful cloud solution, there is well-functioning infrastructure

We strive to make cloud services simple for our customers, enabling them to realise a functional and business-oriented solution. It is essential to create functional abilities that allow the recognition of suitable cloud platforms for business applications. One of the applications may run in public cloud, another in private cloud and a third in an Edge cloud in the customer’s production facility.

The key factor is that all these applications operate as part of a centralised cloud infrastructure management service that is not dependent on time or place.

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