Ahead in the Clouds
September 30th, 2022
Much has been written about the benefits of cloud computing. But more recently, doubts and concerns have crept in, with many asking, “Does moving to cloud actually hurt my business in the long run”.
In this newsletter series, we dive into this question, offering two different points of view. The first shows that cloud is good at the beginning the journey, but that continued business growth requires a more holistic strategic approach, with a hybrid private-and-public offensive working better long term. The second, outlined in our Cloud Radar 2021 report, shows that what matters is the performance (scale, speed, reliability) of your workloads, and the more you shift to cloud, the better.
Other topics up for debate in this edition include Cloud chaos testing, the need for preventive Cloud security, and the different ways in which businesses can move to Cloud, depending on their appetite for risk and the amount of business-IT collaboration in the enterprise.
We finish with a discussion on cloud financial management – an apt topic to close the loop on the debate started above.
“To do cybersecurity right, to prevent threats, you need solutions that do hybrid work. You need the prevention on the agent and also use the Cloud for the vast resources to inspect them.” - Ofir Israel
In this timely podcast, Ofir Israel, VP of Threat Prevention products at Check Point Software Technologies, throws light on the evolution and importance of securing the cloud. The discussion covers data processing in the cloud and prevention and detection of cyberthreats. Find out how cloud enables more flexibility, scalability, and resources to conduct threat inspection as compared to data centers and end points. Also up for discussion is the subject of hybrid work, along with the need of AI to weed out malicious data from Cloud environments.
This podcast is hosted by Chad Watt, researcher and senior writer with the Infosys Knowledge Institute.
Cloud provides infrastructure immediately, at exactly the scale needed by the business. But this paper from Andreesen Horowitz puts forth the argument that more and more cloud at some point provides diminishing returns. Firms that move everything to the Cloud suffer from margin pressure further into their cloud journey. The answer? Be very pragmatic about what you move, and know when to get out before it’s too late.
Recommended by LinkedIn
Everyone’s moving to cloud for the benefits of business growth, OpEx cost reduction, and speed. However, not all cloud migration is similar. In this paper, we draw on Gartner’s 5R migration approach and add three more R’s to factor in hidden migration costs and risks, as well as invasive code and licensing changes.
We conclude that the very best approach is determined by an organization’s appetite for risk, amount of business-IT collaboration, and the requisite value derivation from the business side. Replacement, our 8th R, is seen as optimal for many use cases. As one VP at IDC puts it, “Subscribing to a SaaS service versus provisioning your own environment is like buying an airline ticket versus buying and flying your own Boeing 777”.
This cutting-edge report was the result of mammoth literature reviews, well-defined research hypotheses, and a survey of more than 2500 business and IT cloud experts across the world. The big number? Exceptional cloud performance, the type that overcomes the trillion-dollar paradox already mentioned, can boost profits by up to $414 billion. The caveat? Profit benefits only manifest after 60% of assets have been moved to Cloud. This research also provides an industry view, with financial services and insurance companies getting more than their share of cloud benefits.
Cloud is good, but it can fail, bringing the whole firm down along with it. To hedge against catastrophe, new ways of testing Cloud resilience is needed. One of these methods is known as chaos testing. Here, companies progressively test their systems as they migrate to Cloud, going beyond conventional testing techniques to factor in unexpected situations across stability, reliability, availability, and resilience. Chaos testing creates turbulent situations that brings points of failure to light, influencing design of cloud components in real-time. Read more in this popular IKI article.
Our last paper in this series deals with one of the most pressing needs for business and IT CXOs today. Cost reduction. Cloud costs are spiraling, and many recent thought papers have even advocated for bringing applications back on premise due to unforeseen cloud expenditures. In this paper, we introduce three design principles for holistic cloud finance management, including: 1. Start with the basics of traditional financial management, with accounting, budgeting, and charging used to control Cloud costs, then 2. Move from a CapEx to OpEx financial planning paradigm, before 3. Integrating ownership of cloud among finance, business and IT. We also recommend businesses adopt the cloud finance management framework (see Figure 1) to ensure proper stewardship of cloud resources.
Figure 1. The cloud finance management framework
To continue to receive Infosys Knowledge Institute newsletters, please do follow us on LinkedIn and subscribe to the newsletter. Please do share it with your teams and your professional network.