Join the Discussion: What are the best cloud adoption strategies?

[#1]

It has become a necessity for organization to work in the cloud.

While there are many cloud adoption strategies to choose from, what did you choose and what worked for your organization?

What advice do you have for others looking to make the jump? Are you just beginning your journey? 

Join in the discussion and the first 20 replies will get a $10 Starbucks card! 

[andrewharris]

I will kick things off...

Some of the problems we were looking to solve included improving performance and enhancing scalability so we could extend or create new apps faster. Also, finding a better way to share resources was paramount, as well as a faster timeline for innovation. 

[tcheilly]

Definitely having a good understanding of your business needs/requirements associated with performance and scalability will bring great insight into this discussion. I'd also propose finding the ROI of your current solution (provided to internal and external clients - Do you know how much it cost to keep the existing solution? Will your clients pay more for your services (upsell) if you moved to a cloud-based solution? What are the benefits from their point-of-view?) and compare against the proposed solution, if implemented. The value your data delivers to your clients can be a key driver, should you need executive approval.

How about an end-to-end cost matrix where you also include downtime, ongoing maintenance cost as well as migration support cost (before, during, and after implementation -- remember to account for an Exit plan!) in addition to internal resources, future upgrades (product roadmap), etc.?

Happy to elaborate!

-T.

[andrewharris]

Welcome to the discussion T.! Excellent insight and a great assessment and planning ideas. Will be curious to see what others have to add to your framework! Super insightful and feel free to elaborate time permitting.  - Andrew

[randyfry]

We are considering using the cloud. Any advice or experiences you can share could be helpful!

[andrewharris]

Hey Randy. Welcome! Feel free to post any burning questions you have. As this discussion grows we should all get some great advice and first-hand experiences shared. Stay tuned to this thread. - Andrew

[nexweb]

The choice is easier now than ever, as the top 3 cloud providers Google, AWS and Azure are all offering free tiers, that enable you to try out their systems at no cost. They have all come a long ways since the early days, and now provide a wide variety of integrated services. There is also the option to utilize a fixed cost, cloud VPS like digitalOcean, which is  very reasonable in terms of price and resources. 

In these days of cyber warfare and script kiddies trying to access any site they can, it is imperative that you have your application deployed on a reliable, redundant system. You also get the benefit of being to scale your application dynamically or very easily. The additional cost, if any, is minimal and well worth the investment. 

What did we choose? We have developed and maintain thousands of sites and applications and have used all of the providers above, since their inception. Each has their strong points and the appropriate provider would depend on the specific application and your own requirements.

[michaelhayes]

Great topic Andrew!

I’ve excerpted some pointers from an article I wrote a few years ago that may be helpful to our audience here.

“[Public cloud] service providers need to prove via audits they can be good stewards of other people’s intellectual property by having precautions like redundant network connectivity; diverse paths for power supplies; huge banks of batteries; generators with days of available fuel; physical and logistical access protection; and so on. These security measures are more than a typical company would provide for its own servers, making cloud services from a reputable provider more secure than self-hosting data. […]

Business continuity and disaster recovery can be greatly enhanced by cloud technologies. In the old days, when companies ran their own data centers and computing resources, the prudent ones performed regular backups and maintained redundant resources in offsite locations. In case of need, however, it could take days or longer to get a company back up and running. In the cloud, a business can have fully redundant facilities that could failover from primary to backup, with no perceptible interruption to regular business operations.”

Another big benefit of choosing the cloud is elasticity; resources can grow or shrink as demand warrants. This makes it especially useful for companies in a rapid growth stage; they are freed from low-value infrastructure maintenance and better able to focus on high-value customer experience initiatives.

All of the reasons above and more contributed to our decision to build triPOS^® Cloud. Based on the proven engine from triPOS^® Direct, we’ve greatly simplified the merchant experience to a true plug and pay solution. ISVs can leverage triPOS Cloud to deliver compelling offerings with zero on-site installation required so merchants can be up and running within minutes.

[randyfry]

Good morning, off topic but critical! How do I get my Starbucks card? 

[andrewharris]

Hey Randy. I will be reaching out to those on this thread in a direct message and getting that taken care of by end of next week. Stay tuned! 

[support]

Classic! I would be in the same position...coffee is critical.

[randyfry]

Thanks. It was delicious!