Decrease business costs with the cloud by Darren Bak, Synthesis Head Solutionist
The COVID-19 pandemic and the 30% depreciation of the Rand to the Dollar this year has not only disrupted business planning but caused major concerns for decision-makers and the future of their organisations. Fortunately, the cloud provides the means to increase organisational agility while reducing costs.
Cost optimisation is a key pillar in cloud adoption. However, it requires companies to factor in everything from their overt costs to the intangible to ensure this is achieved and value is created. There are many factors often overlooked in a cloud journey, no more so than the culture shift required.
Understanding the impact
A migration requires application teams to take responsibility for their spend and getting the control and ability to optimise on their costs. By ignoring the importance of a cloud-centric culture, companies will inevitably experience a bill shock at the end of the month. This is due to developers having free reign to use whatever cloud service they want without consideration of the costs involved. More importantly, developers often overlook how the design of the solution impacts on its cost. It therefore becomes vital to work with an AWS partner that has the expertise required to help reduce cloud bills while empowering teams to manage their resources optimally.
Now more than ever it is important to get application teams to be frugal with their spend. To accomplish this, a company should upskill its team so they can successfully manage the cloud journey from inception to migration. Even if this journey is outsourced, it is imperative that the in-house team understands the technology involved. This does not only refer to the technical team but the key business decision-makers as well. Training therefore becomes an important element of the cloud strategy for both executives and technical team members to understand the intricacies of making the shift.
A good service provider will also be able to assist with a comprehensive review of the application ecosystem and processes that support it. This helps ensure cloud solutions are built in a cost-effective way while ensuring the right optimisation processes are in place. Given the recent launch of a local AWS data centre, an experienced partner will help identify the best programmes to get involved in to reduce your AWS bill.
Cloud economics
By means of a managed services approach, Synthesis will be able to manage the AWS billing for a company freeing it up to focus on meeting its strategic deliverables. But even with the assistance of a partner, there are numerous decisions to be made when undertaking a cloud journey. It is easy to become overwhelmed by jargon, offers, and migration strategies.
Below is a checklist to keep in mind that helps ensure a company gets successfully started on its cloud journey:
- Automate as much as possible.
- Upskill your team so they can successfully manage the cloud journey from inception to migration. Synthesis, for example, offers cloud economics training for executives and technical teams alike.
- Ensure your cloud solutions are built in a cost-effective way through a well-architected framework review with adequate cost management and optimisation processes in place.
- Address the culture of the development team and ensure it supports the business vision.
- Explain to everyone involved the reasons for going to the cloud in terms that resonate with them.
- Allocate time in sprints for cost reviews and optimisation.
- Define a costing tool.
- Track utilisation and spend (after all, what can be measured can be controlled).
- Make sure the business correlates cost with value.
Like any journey, the move towards the cloud needs to have the right expertise, partners, and strategies in place. When this is done correctly, businesses not only achieve cost savings but benefit from resilience, productivity, and agility.
