cloud optimization Archives - Page 2 of 2

You’re on AWS, now what? Five things you should consider now.

You migrated your applications to AWS for a reason. Maybe it was for the unlimited scalability, powerful computing capability, ease and flexibility of deployment, movement from CapEx to OpEx model, or maybe it was simply because the boss told you to. However you got there, you’re there. So, what’s next? How do you take advantage of your applications and data that reside in AWS? What should you be thinking about in terms of security and compliance? Here are 5 things you should consider in order to amplify the value of being on AWS:

Create competitive advantage from your AWS data
Accelerate application development
Increase the security of your AWS environment
Ensure cloud compliance
Reduce cloud spend without reducing application deployment

Create competitive advantage from your data

You have a wealth of information in the form of your AWS datasets. Finding patterns and insights not just within these datasets, but across all datasets is key to using data analysis to your advantage. You need a modern, cloud-native data lake.

Data lakes, though, can be difficult to implement and require specialized, focused knowledge of data architecture. Utilizing a cloud expert can help you architect and deploy a data lake geared toward your specific business needs, whether it’s making better-informed decisions, speeding up a process, reducing costs or something else altogether.

Download this datasheet to learn more about transforming your data analytics processes into a flexible, scalable data lake.

Accelerate application development

If you arrived at AWS to take advantage of the rapid deployment of infrastructure to support development, you understand the power of bringing applications to market faster. Now may be the time to fully immerse your company in a DevOps transformation.

A DevOps Transformation involves adopting a set of cultural values and organizational practices that improve business outcomes by increasing collaboration and feedback between business stakeholders, Development, QA, IT Operations, and Security. This includes an evolution of your company culture, automation and tooling, processes, collaboration, measurement systems, and organizational structure—in short, things that cannot be accomplished through automation alone.

To learn more about DevOps transformation, download this free eBook about the Misconceptions and Challenges of DevOps Transformation.

Increase the security of your AWS environment

How do you know if you’re AWS environment is truly secure? You don’t, unless you deploy a comprehensive security assessment of your AWS environment that measures your environment against the latest industry standards and best practices. This type of review provides a list of vulnerabilities and actionable remediations, an evaluation of your Incident Response Policy, and a comprehensive consultation of the system issues that are causing these vulnerabilities.

To learn more, review this Cloud Security Rapid Review document and learn how to gain protection from immediate threats.

Ensure cloud compliance

Deploying and managing cloud infrastructure requires new skills, software and management to maintain regulatory compliances within your organization. Without the proper governance in place, organizations can be exposed to security vulnerabilities and potentially compromise confidential information.

A partner like 2nd Watch can be a great resource in this area. The 2nd Watch Compliance Assessment and Remediation service is designed to evaluate, monitor, auto-remediate, and report on compliance of your cloud infrastructure, assessing industry standard policies including CIS, GDPR, HIPAA, NIST, PCI-DSS, and SOC2.

Download this datasheet to learn more about our Compliance Assessment & Remediation service.

Reduce cloud spend without reducing application deployment

Need to get control of your cloud spend without reducing the value that cloud brings to your business? This is a common discussion we have with clients. To reduce your cloud spend without decreasing the benefits of your cloud environment, we recommend examining the Pillars of Cloud Cost Optimization to prevent over-expenditure and wasted investment. The pillars include:

Auto-parking and on-demand services
Cost models
Rightsizing
Instance family / VM type refresh
Addressing waste
Shadow IT

For organizations that incorporate cloud cost optimization into their cloud infrastructure management, significant savings can be found, especially in larger organizations with considerable cloud spend.

Download our A Holistic Approach to Cloud Cost Optimization eBook to learn more.

After you’ve migrated to AWS, the next logical step in ensuring IT satisfies corporate business objectives is knowing what’s next for your organization in the cloud. Moving to the cloud was the right decision then and can remain the right decision going forward. Implement any of the five recommendations and accelerate your organization forward.

-Michael Elliott, Sr Director of Product Marketing

Cloud for Advanced Users – The 5 Most Important Lessons Learned Over a Decade

Being involved in cloud services and working closely with cloud providers over the past 10 years has given us a great deal of insight into the triumphs and pitfalls of cloud consumers. We’ve distilled that vast experience and come up with our list of the 5 most important lessons we’ve learned over the past decade for users that are experienced in the cloud with multiple applications/workloads running.

1. Governance – Tagging, Tools, and Automation

Many of our customers have hundreds, if not thousands of accounts, and we’ve helped them solve many of their governance challenges. One challenge is ensuring they’re not doing certain things – for example, shadow IT and functioning in siloes. In the cloud, you want everyone to have visibility into best practices and understanding the critical role cloud plays in creating business value.

There are numerous tools and automation methods you can leverage to ensure your governance is in step with the latest innovation. First and foremost, a strong tagging strategy is critical. As with shadow IT, if you don’t tag things correctly, your teams can spin up resources with limited visibility on who owns them, continuously running and accumulating expenses over time. If you don’t start with a tagging strategy from day one, retroactively correcting is a herculean task. Starting with a strong architectural foundation and making sure that foundation stays in place with the proper tools will ensure governance doesn’t become a burden.

Putting the proper guardrails in place for this, such as AWS Config, can help overcome this challenge and make sure everybody’s following the rules. Sometimes governance and moving fast can seem like adversaries, but automation can help satisfy both.

2. Optimization – It’s not a one-time exercise

Cloud users tend to think of optimization in terms of Reserved Instances (RI), but it reaches far beyond just RIs. Well-defined policies must exist to exhibit control over spend and discipline to go along with policies.

There are many ways to leverage cloud native solutions and products to achieve optimization as well as new classes of service. One key point is leveraging the right resources where appropriate. As new services come out and skills increase within organizations, the opportunity to not only optimize spend but optimize the applications themselves by leveraging more cloud native services will continue to drive down operating cost.

Optimization is not a one-time exercise, either. It’s an ongoing practice that needs to be done on a regular basis. Like cleaning out the garage, you need to maintain it. Who’s responsible for this? Often, it’s your company’s Cloud Center of Excellence, or a partner like 2nd Watch.

3. Cloud Center of Excellence – Be bold and challenge the norm

We encourage all organizations to form a Cloud Center of Excellence (CCoE). Typically lead by an executive, your CCoE should be a multi-stakeholder organization that includes representatives from all areas of the business. With the multi-skilled group, you benefit from subject matter experts across a wide variety of areas within your organization who collectively become subject matter experts in cloud services and solutions. When you break down siloes, you’re able to move rapidly.

Your CCoE should be formed at the beginning of your migration and continue to revisit new capabilities released in the cloud on an ongoing basis, updating the organization’s standards to ensure enforcement.

One of the CCoE’s biggest roles is evangelizing within the organization to ensure people are embracing the cloud and celebrating successes, whether it comes from implementing DevOps with cloud native tools or optimizing and cloud refactoring. The CCoE’s motto should is, ‘Be bold, challenge the norm, look for new ways of doing things, and celebrate BIG.’

4. Multi-Cloud – Get out of your comfort zone

As an advanced user, you have grown up with AWS and have a solid understanding and background of AWS. You’ve learned all the acronyms for AWS and understand the products and services. But now you’re being asked to integrate another CSP provider you might not be as familiar with. How do you take that basic cloud knowledge and transition to Azure or GCP?

There’s a little bit of a learning curve, so we recommend taking a training course. Some even offer training based upon your knowledge of AWS. For example, GCP offers training for AWS professionals. Training can help you acclimate to the nomenclature and technology differences between CSPs.

We typically see customers go deep with one cloud provider, and that tends to be where most workloads reside. This can be for financial reasons or due to skills and experience. You get a greater discount when you push more things into one CSP. However, some solutions fit better in one CSP over the other. To maximize your cloud strategy, you need to break down walls, get out of your comfort zone, and pursue the best avenue for the business.

5. Talent – Continuously sharpen the knife’s edge

Talent is in high demand, so it can be challenging to attract the top talent. One way to overcome this is to develop talent internally. All cloud providers offer certifications, and incentivizing employees to go out there and get those certifications goes a long way. With that, success breeds success. Celebrate and evangelize early wins!

The cloud changes fast, so you need to continuously retrain and relearn. And as a bonus – those individuals that are involved in the CCoE have the unique opportunity to learn and grow outside of their area of expertise, so proactively volunteer to be a part of that group.

If you want more detailed information in any of these five areas, we have a wealth of customer examples we’d love to jump into with you. Contact us to start the conversation.

-Ian Willoughby, Chief Architect and Skip Barry, Executive Cloud Enablement Director