11-25-20 | Blog Post

Optimizing Workloads for Public and Private Cloud

Blog Posts

Putting this decade plus of experience into practice, some enterprises are now reassessing workload decisions. “Cloud Repatriation” is broadly defined as shifting workloads from public cloud to private cloud services or back to proprietary data center environments. Cloud Repatriation can be an act of optimization or a reaction to poor results due to suboptimal cloud architectures and/or migrations.  Additionally, in a worst-case scenario, the business may consider knee jerk changes to their cloud and workload strategies for a short-term fix that can result in a stalled or failed workload migration strategy. These situations illustrate the value of comprehensive workload evaluations as part of a cloud strategy which predictably delivers the expected performance, security and financial results.

 

Among the key criteria for workload evaluations:

  • Application architecture: Cloud native or legacy applications? “Lift and shift” of the applications to the cloud without re-architecting can impact performance and deliver suboptimal economics.
  • Location and performance requirements: While a company-wide CRM or email application with low performance requirements will realize great benefits from public cloud, latency sensitive and/or high-performance requirement applications like engineering or analytics are better suited to private cloud.
  • Scalability and resiliency: How transient are the needs of the workload? Does batching or bursting create dynamic capacity requirements? Public cloud is typically the best choice for these types of workloads as long as compliance or data residency concerns are addressed.
  • Complexity of system, workflow, endpoint and cloud integrations: The more links a workload requires across systems, applications, clouds and endpoints, the more complex the workload integration. This area requires the highest level of qualified assistance from your service provider to assure that architecture and SLA match the performance and connectivity requirements of the workload.
  • Data transfer and volume: Where large amounts of data are frequently transferred or great distances to multiple locations are a factor, cost may become an issue in a public cloud environment.
  • Security, compliance, data residency: Data, record and intellectual property security transport, and storage requirements are frequently governed by compliance Assuring that each workload operates in a fully compliant environment, with an independently audited and BAA protected cloud provider, is an important business regulatory requirement.
  • Costs: Understanding the nature of the workload and accurately predicting its true operational costs (e.g. Is it dynamic in capacity requirements, is it chatty, IT support costs, security and protection requirements, software licensing, etc.) will help assure allocated budgets align to the optimal choice of public or private cloud.
  • IT support capability and experience: Migration of workloads to public or private cloud requires skills that may not be available in current IT teams and are very expensive skills to acquire. Architecting and managing multiple clouds as well as managing the migration efforts and run environments for a high number of applications is a complex effort. Partnering with a cloud provider that has the expertise to act as an extension of your IT staff is one of the best ways to work around this problem.

Additional help is available for workload management

Best in class cloud providers today are offering services based upon industry standard infrastructure, hypervisors, and control panels that are familiar to your IT staff. These environments smooth migration and offer automated layers of control for the addition or removal of resources, environment configuration and even provide compliant back-up and business continuity tools.

The single console delivers workload automation and cost optimization

 IT complexity can be reduced with a single pane of glass interface and control plane with built-in tools and plugins to simplify setup and management of environments:

  • Improve business agility and speed time to revenue by combining service blueprints for rapid deployment with the ability to scale resources up/down.
  • Control costs and manage allocation and quotas across multiple public and private cloud services including on-demand consumption reporting.
  • Delegate control with self-service role-based access of applications, infrastructure and networking management.
  • Manage backup and continuity with integrated tools enabling organizations to fully protect workloads and data.

A competent and experienced extension to your workload management staff

Your cloud provider partner should offer the tools, services and assistance to help design a workload plan that will deliver predictable business and economic benefits. A joint effort with your trusted provider should include assistance with migrating your workloads and applications. Most often the cloud provider should have the industries best and most experienced team and latest tools and systems to assist and optimize your cloud and workload migration efforts.

This is Where Cloud Gets Real.

If you’re looking for solutions that drive the complexity out of cloud management, Otava can help. Otava Gen3 Cloud offers simple-to-use cloud services that put you in control. That’s it. Built on the latest Cloud Director infrastructure from VMware, you can easily add or remove resources, configure your environment, and dream big. Plus, prepackaged services are tailored to your unique needs, with backup and continuity tools at your fingertips. Consider our secure, compliant Gen3 Cloud Solutions managed by a team of experts trained in the latest security best practices. Call 877-740-5028 or contact us to learn more.

Otava Gen3 information

Download the Otava Gen3 Cloud datasheet

 

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