Get your head out of the clouds

With the world in a continuous state of change, digital transformation has become essential for business survival. The integration of digital technology into all areas of the business changes how they operate and deliver value, enabling them to become more agile in responding to changing market needs and emerging demands.

Cloud computing plays a key role in this revolution. It addresses many of the obstacles presented by older technology models, such as longish release cycles that are unable to keep up with changing market demands, and rigid infrastructures that are unable to scale fast enough to cope with the volume of data available for effective analytics.

Many businesses recognise that an operating model underpinned by cloud, with the flexibility and scalability that it affords, enables them to create differentiation and accelerate the rollout of new strategies, products and services ahead of their competitors.

But the paradigm shift in technology infrastructure presents its own challenges as well. Managing the cloud environment can be a formidable undertaking, starting with the migration to the cloud.

Cloud migration refers to the process of moving all the applications and data from on-premises systems to the cloud¹. This can be a time-consuming and costly process if there is no clear business objective behind the move or a clearly thought-out migration plan. Misconfiguration and a host of other possible missteps at this stage could derail the migration process or lead to application downtime, security exposure and management issues down the road.

Once they step foot into the cloud, businesses are going to realise that it will not be a monolithic data centre in the sky. The reality is that the enterprise cloud environment can become really complex.

According to a report in Flexera, 93% of companies are embracing a multi-cloud strategy² with the average company connecting to over 20 cloud services. With 96%³ of enterprise data still being stored on-premises, businesses are also likely to be looking at a hybrid mix of public and private clouds.

Without careful management from the outset, a hybrid multi-cloud setup could easily spiral into cloud sprawl. It will become increasingly difficult to have visibility and control over all its cloud infrastructure components or full accountability of the resources in use.

The scalable and on-demand nature of cloud computing services can also make it difficult to predict and manage costs. For example, when the focus is on ensuring constant availability and service quality, businesses may spin up infrastructure in anticipation of increased demand, but fail to tighten it thereafter, leading to wastage.

With cloud spawl, this becomes even harder to manage. Research shows that 80% of organisations overshoot their cloud infrastructure-as-a-service budgets, and 47% do not continuously optimise cloud workloads.⁴

Security figures prominently as one of the major real-world challenges involved in managing a multi-cloud environment. According to a Gartner report, 50% of businesses will accidentally expose data or services in the cloud⁵.

Research also suggests that a majority of security threats in cloud computing come from misconfigurations⁶. Typical mistakes include unencrypted data volumes, unsecured network port settings, and lack of multi-factor authentication requirements. 

Organisations also need to continuously monitor their cloud environment to ensure that they are compliant with rules and regulations surrounding the safety and security of confidential data.

To identify and fix these issues at scale across a distributed cloud environment, businesses will need access to specialised skills to set security configuration parameters in cloud instances, automate security processes and build continuous monitoring systems.

Therein lies the crux of the problem. Whether it is cloud migration, dealing with complexity, cloud optimisation, security or any other aspect of hybrid cloud management, many of the challenges that businesses face can be linked back to a common chokepoint – the shortage of skills.

According to IDC, skills shortage in cloud technologies across the Asia Pacific is proving to be the greatest roadblock towards digital transformation⁷.

It is not surprising, therefore, that when it comes to a multi-cloud environment, most businesses in the Asia Pacific would rather pass the challenge on to a managed cloud services provider with relevant and up-to-date skillsets for the job.

A study by Cloudify.Asia found that just 3% of businesses self-manage their multi-cloud environments⁸. The bulk of them are looking to engage with a partner to take on this responsibility.

The right managed cloud service provider will provide businesses with access to cloud specialists who are able to deliver proactive IT services across security, networking, and the cloud infrastructure, and introduce artificial intelligence, automation and other capabilities to manage the hybrid environment.

The business will be able to leverage the partner’s experience and expertise to lead the planning process, build a business case that articulates the total cost of ownership for the cloud migration, and also build and execute the migration plan.

Dashboards can be implemented to enable centralised management of all cloud services, and right-sizing of resources can be done to improve utilisation and reduce costs.

As agility becomes a prerequisite for survival and businesses undergo digital transformation, having a service provider that is able to manage the cloud environment in real time will give the business an advantage when it comes to innovating ahead of the competition. It will free the business from having to deal with the challenges of managing the cloud and focus instead on creating and delivering value.

Find out how an experienced cloud management partner can help with your cloud infrastructure.

¹ Hurix Digital, Cloud Migration: How Can Enterprises Benefit from a Successful Cloud Migration, 2020.

² Flexera, Flexera Releases 2020 State of the Cloud Report, 2020.

³ Gartner, Modernizing Private Cloud Workloads in Midsize Enterprises, 2021.

⁴ Gartner, How to Identify Solutions for Managing Costs in Public Cloud IaaS, 2018.  

⁵ Gartner, Innovation Insight for Cloud Security Posture Management, 2019.

⁶ Cloud Security Alliance, Top Threats to Cloud Computing: Egregious Eleven Deep Dive, 2020.

⁷ CRN, Skills shortage biggest roadblock to digital transformation: IDC, 2020.

⁸ Channel Asia, Managing complex multi-cloud environments is the channel’s next big opportunity, 2021.