Many businesses are still trying to determine what percentage of their infrastructure—or which specific workloads—should move to the cloud. Per Gartner, the cloud spending forecast for 2023 is $599B—a 37% increase from 2021’s forecast of $410B. During the same period of time, cloud infrastructure as a service (IaaS) is forecast to grow by 52%, followed by cloud software as a service (SaaS) at 31%.*
Creating an on-premises infrastructure requires a thoughtful approach, but it is different in the public cloud. You need to purchase hardware covering server and networking needs for an on-premises environment which—at the most simplistic view—takes time to ship and set up. The public cloud provides agility that cannot be realized in an on-premises environment. You can spin up a new workload within minutes and have it feeding data to your application within an hour (once configured).
Considerations
The cloud offers speed to market that is revolutionary—and so many more benefits. However, it also creates the need to implement policies controlling spend. There are compliance considerations around data residency and industry regulations as well. And don’t forget about access management and data protection. Plus, you need to assemble and assign the new responsibilities to the staff. Oh, and did you consider how to get the staff trained to pivot their skills to the management of resources in the cloud, or are you going to acquire new talent in this resource constrained market? Do you know what tools you will need to manage your cloud environment and what they cost?
The Bottom Line
Needless to say, there are many things to consider when moving to the cloud. And each decision has its own set of pros and cons—and unnecessary costs if done incorrectly. But you don’t have to do all the thinking, planning, and supervising yourself. Connection has a mature managed services practice with Azure Expert designation. Our team will administer and monitor your environment while uncovering ways to further innovate within your cloud. We can help you achieve your prioritized outcomes at an accelerated pace.
Take a moment to review Connection’s Azure Managed Services. You can use the form at the bottom to contact an expert—or reach out directly to us through your Account Manager. We would be happy to get a better understanding of your goals and build a plan that helps you achieve success.
*Gartner, 2022, Gartner Forecasts Worldwide Public Cloud End-User Spending to Reach Nearly $500 Billion in 2022
Dan Ortiz
With over twenty years of experience in the software industry, Dan began his career as a technical sales specialist, concentrating on mobile device form factor aggregation. Currently, he leads Connection’s Digital Workspace Center of Excellence, where he is dedicated to bringing innovative new solutions and services to market to best serve customer needs. Dan has held various presales roles, where he excelled at identifying strategic initiatives with customers and turning them into reality, always considering both long- and short-term goals with a phased approach. For the past decade, his focus has been on cloud-based transformation, helping customers revolutionize their business practices. He has led presales teams specializing in Multi-cloud and Digital Workspace solutions. In his spare time, he enjoys spending time outdoors hiking, kayaking, and engaging in physically challenging adventures.
