IT professionals are often asked by clients about what cloud solution they recommend, and in general, only three possibilities are ever considered: Amazon Web Services, Google, and Microsoft. The truth is, there is no cookie cutter right answer, and the answer, in fact, depends on a variety of factors, and never is a single cloud platform, despite what people want to hear.
What to Consider
Discussed below is a number of considerations that should be thought about before deciding what public cloud services are best for you.
Look carefully into architecture, or what is commonly referred to as a “stack”. Let’s look at the following example: Say a business has 2,000 enterprise applications that you are considering moving to the cloud. If moved, they will likely drive more value, including reduced total cost of ownership or increased business agility. In order to find the best platform for the applications, it is important to realize that not all of the applications are even right for the cloud at this point.
Considerations also need to be made as to the patterns of the workloads, such as processing, storage, security, communications, and governance. It is critical to understand how to back the right architecture into your requirements, and unfortunately, that solution is never as easy as simply AWS, Microsoft, or Google. It is much more complex than that.
Finding the Right Solution
Targeting the right solution begins with compiling a list of cloud services or other technologies that meet all of the requirements of the majority of your workloads. All workloads will not fit into a single cloud service solution.
While evaluating options, it is important to understand that you are working from the general to the particular. This means that if one specific public cloud is able to provide a solution for the majority of workloads, there will still always be special instances that will not fit into your standard cloud. This is OK.
So what does the “right solution” look like? It starts with a stack that consists of the IaaS cloud platform that is best able to meet your individual needs and requirements and also includes data management, networking, security, and governance. It is likely that your preferred IaaS cloud platform will be met by one or two of the Big 3 providers, however, more special needs may be met by other providers.
Using some combination of the big 3 providers whenever possible seems to be the key, but refrain from force-fitting specialty needs to them. While standard platforms are a good thing, they do not always meet your actual requirements. It is highly likely that the most appropriate cloud solution for you will be an eclectic mix of technology.
Contact QualityIP at (330) 931-4141 or email us at info@qualityip.com to learn more about selecting the right cloud services for your unique needs. We specialize in providing managed IT services for businesses in {city}.