Why?

Because companies choose to use Cloud Services for the following reasons.
1. To urgently replace an existing backup solution.
2. Because some new urgent project demands a Cloud based solution.
3. To speedily boost or replace on premise servers.

All of these are time based demands and often they spawn a sudden launch into Cloud without serious consideration of how resources should be managed.

The common problems this creates include:

• No tagging
• No one knows why a server was built or if it can be deleted
• Lack of clear ownership
• Bills cannot be allocated properly
• Disagreement as to who owns the shared Cloud services
• Insecure solutions
• Inefficient solutions
• Inflexible designs

Insperitas can help you by:

Evaluating your whole Cloud infrastructure
Ensuring proper systems and processes to enforce best practices
(read more…)
Remediation of existing issues

But you don’t want or need to become dependent on Insperitas. And you probably wont be able to move immediately to meet best practices. A better solution might be for a consultant can come to your site (or work remotely) for 1  day a week to teach and guide your own employees to implement success.

Together let’s bring your costs back down to earth.

Call me  (+44 7932 678578) or fill in your details on our contact page and start moving towards a more cost effective Cloud engagement.

These good principles need to start from the top. “Individuals and interactions over processes and tools” embodies the root of the question. Bosses should hire people they trust…and then trust them. This doesn’t just apply to developers. Once managers get this principle, Agile development follows smoothly.  Until managers get it, we will face this continual, painful, seismic fault, with occasional earthquakes and aftershocks felt on both sides of the divide. (With PMs invariably caught in the middle!)

Bosses should hire people they trust…and then trust them

This reaches back to the recruitment processes which are not designed to select the right people but focus on certificates. It reaches even further back into the education system that directs children toward certificate attainment. (Excellent TED talks on this https://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_build_a_school_in_the_cloud and http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity) We should, of course, 1^st teach children to care for other people and to respect them, and then teach them how to learn. Employees also need to do their part, being willing to be flexible with their role depending on what is needed at the time instead of sticking rigidly to an old job description.

So whilst I don’t disagree with teaching Agile (or Scrum, or any other agile development process) to development teams, I really believe that we need to start with teaching the philosophy and principles behind the Agile Manifesto.

“Are you asking me for money?’

Followed quickly by:

“Can you save me money?’

Of course the answer is:  It depends!  I would like to shout out “YOU’RE MISSING THE POINT” but that’s probably not helpful. Instead I decided to write this blog  “Saving Money with The Cloud”.

Most businesses I speak to face many pressures and the last thing on their mind is IT.  They are concerned about getting new business, managing staff, their premises costs, managing their current workload effectively… the list goes on.

So here are  FIVE reasons to think about your business and Cloud IT Solutions.

Continuity

Taking the most obvious reasons for spending on IT first, we need to talk about failure. What happens when it all goes wrong? You have data saved on your laptop or a local server and it breaks. Do you have a backup? Do you know how to access your backup? Will you be reliant on someone visiting your business to fix the problem? What will that cost?

We can level this up too… what happens when the company you rely on to supply your backup solution fails to deliver?  Do you want to wait until there is a disaster to find out if your solution is effective? Most companies seem to be happy to operate with this head in the sand approach. The truth is that backing up to Cloud is likely to be either a necessary extra expense (if you have no valuable backup solution today) or a cost saving (if your current backup solution is anywhere other than in The Cloud). So the answer here is  “Yes I can save you money.”

Growth

If you need to expand for any reason you should think Cloud. If you take on staff how will you communicate and share data? Do you need more space for more data?  The Cloud might be the cheapest option and will remove your need to spend cash on new hardware.

Money Management

Maybe this should be the number 1 reason to move to Cloud? With Cloud Services you pay for what you use. Its easy to budget. There are no unexpected bills. Any Cloud support costs should be 100% transparent with no surprises.

Security

The next thing we need to discuss is “Security”.  IT Security is such a massive topic, whole books are written about it and anything I write here could only gloss over one of the most important IT topics.   Suffice it to say that lots of small companies imagine that this is not an issue for them. Until you ask them what their competitors could do with their customer list… or what they could do with their competitors list of contacts. Security IS an issue for EVERYONE.

Some imagine that the least secure place for their data is on the cloud but I suggest you look at it this way: If I were to post your data where everyone can see it, such as on a billboard, what would we need to do with that data to keep it secure. Then answer is to encrypt it. Secrecy has come a long way since you were a child. We don’t just swap the letters around or write it in lemon juice. Very complex encryption techniques are available to all of us. By utilizing this technology we can choose precisely who should see what data whilst making it available easily.

We don’t just swap the letters around
or write it in lemon juice.

Improving your business

For some companies there is a clear benefit in improving their IT. Yes you can save money by introducing efficiency to your business. Good IT choices can drive better business decisions.  Even very small businesses should be tech-aware. Whether its digital marketing, a better website or sharing data with customers YOU can improve your business by making good IT choices.

For larger customers, adopting Cloud best practices can make you reach your market faster, change quicker and allow you to become more agile. Business growth is often driven by disrupting the status quo. Will you be disrupting or disrupted?

You Need  Cheap Secure Offsite Backup. The Cloud can be an effective way to achieve this.

Your Server Hardware is Old. You have some applications running on a server that is aging and ought to be replaced. If “Cash is King” then saving the capital expense might be useful.

You’d Like to Reduce Your IT Costs. Sometimes a service that is currently provided in house such as email can be delivered more effectively (and possibly cheaper) by a Cloud Service Provider (CSP).

Whatever your drivers are, it is essential that you resolve the following important issues!

Choosing the CSP. There are a number of providers. Which one(s) are a good fit for your business?

Account set up. The last thing you need is to set up the account in a way that will leave you frustrated later.

Cost Management. You need to be certain that costs cannot escalate horribly because of a poor design.

Security is essential. How can you be 100% sure that your data (and your customer’s) data is secure?

This blog expands on the topics above. I would be delighted to assist you with investigating and providing solutions for any of these. Insperitas is also able to provide support for Cloud solutions.

Choosing The CSP.

The three largest providers are also the most flexible

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the largest CSP on the planet and offers a very wide range of services. The tools are relatively well known and can be adapted easily. For many this is the go-to place when beginning a Cloud Journey. https://aws.amazon.com/choosing-a-cloud-platform/

Microsoft are good at providing a Cloud version of services that they would traditionally provide by selling applications. Email is a classic example. For larger companies MS also offer a mature Identity and Access Management Solution based on Active Directory. Microsoft have a large network of partners and are “Enterprise Ready” in the sense that they are the oldest and most mature of the Big 3 CSPs.

Google are slightly newer to providing Cloud Services when compared to AWS. Google Cloud Platform (GCP) provides a much smaller array of services than AWS. However the services which they do provide are very well executed. They have a stated aim to be the largest CSP in the world in the next few years. https://cloud.google.com/why-google/

Setting up the account

The important things to ensure when it comes to setting up your account in either AWS or in GCP are:

• Dont get locked out! You need MFA but who will have ultimate control?
• For AWS choose a good Phone number.
• For Google, will you get an enterprise account or a Gmail account?
• How can you give access to another account for support?
• Can you make use of free services?

https://aws-tutorials.blogspot.co.uk/2017/04/setting-up-your-new-aws-account.html

Setting up the account

The important things to ensure when it comes to setting up your account in either AWS or in GCP are:

• Dont get locked out! You need MFA but who will have ultimate control?
• For AWS choose a good Phone number.
• For Google, will you get an enterprise account or a Gmail account?
• How can you give access to another account for support?
• Can you make use of free services?

https://aws-tutorials.blogspot.co.uk/2017/04/setting-up-your-new-aws-account.html

Managing Costs

If you have teenagers in your house you will well understand the difference in attitude to electricity use between bill-payers and non-bill-payers (also known as freeloaders). When you are using your own hosted infrastructure you only have to make sure that you don’t fill up the hard drive or place too many demands on memory and processor. However when you use Cloud Services you need to be sure from day one that you will be warned if your monthly costs are going above your anticipated levels.

In addition you need to be sure that your costs are allocated correctly. This isn’t difficult but demands that you follow good Cloud practices right from the start.

Security

When I setup one of my first Cloud servers I was a little surprised to find out a week later that a virus had been installed on the server. I had left open a port to the server that could have been disastrous. These days whenever I build any service online I start with ensuring that it is secure. This isn’t complicated but it is necessary.

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When designing Cloud Solutions ensure that the load is spread in a way that will cater for failure. The extent of the spread will depend on the criticality of the service as more spread equates to higher cost.

Use Load Balancers effectively to separate stateless micro-services from each other.

In order to ensure that costs are kept to a minimum it should be possible at all times to know all there is to know about each service. Its important to realize that  when using elastic virtual servers, the logs could be deleted when the server is deleted. Therefore servers should log all data centrally in a way that can be readily interrogated.

• Log everything. Modern Cloud Services provide detailed logs. Collect them ALL. These include Application Logs, Infrastructure Logs and Security Logs!
• Good elasticity depends on having accurate usage data.
• Failing to measure is a sure fire way to waste money.
• Set alerts on services based on the metrics expected and your design.
• Use Tags properly. Your 1st tag for each item should be Cost_Centre. Tagging Taxonomy is important to save future headaches.
• A good logging tool is essential for intelligent interpretation.

So it is with Cloud Computing. If we think of Cloud as simply a bunch of servers off site then we are missing 95% of the benefits. we could just lift and shift our existing server estate and provision it from a Cloud Service Provider but that is unimaginative and prosaic.

The right approach is “embrace” Cloud. This will necessitate a complete change of mind set within your current IT world!

One reason for this is that Cloud Services are charged for by the minute or by the hour (depending on some basic choices) and therefore you should only build EXACTLY what you need to consume. Most servers only operate at a small fraction of their capacity for most of a day. Traditional server estates are designed to be much larger than needed to be able to cope with spikes in demand. Cloud Servers should be stopped when they are not being used and therefore you wont need to pay for them.  It wouldn’t make sense to have someone on standby to start and stop machines when needed either. So therefore all Cloud Services SHOULD be consumed programmatically!

Once we have taken that important leap in understanding we are well on the way to EMBRACING rather than USING Cloud. In my next post I will get to IaC to describe why this is such a BIG THING.

So to start at the beginning: What Is Cloud?

Using the term Cloud to refer to computing services really took off in 2006 as Amazon started to sell access to the computing power that they used to manage the Amazon.com market-place. Google followed suit two years later with Google App Engine. It essentially refers to the practice of providing computer resources that  are consumed over the internet. Commonly these resources are Compute and Storage resources but can  (and will) be expanded to cover almost all IT Technical Services.

A good analogy is electricity. Very few companies today would find it necessary to to generate their own electricity. Rather it is a service that they consume. It is cheaper and easier to let experts handle power generation and deliver it to your door, to be consumed by your company, paid for in units as you use them.

There are some important definitions that we will cover later that will explain some of the differences between different flavours and styles of Cloud Computing such as SaaS, PaaS and IaaS. Also we will cover Hybrid Cloud Public Cloud and Private Cloud to see if we can understand which of these will be most beneficial for you.

Next See “Using Cloud or Embracing Cloud” as this will help you understand some of the reasons why you should ensure that you and your company are properly engaged with the Cloud world.

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