According to a recent survey from Softchoice, just 43 percent of IT leaders said their organizations have been able to stick to their cloud budgets. The same number confessed to not understanding how to create an effective cloud management strategy. Obviously, if you don’t know how to manage your cloud services, you’ll probably have trouble managing the costs involve with those services.
Here is a common scenario. An organization has an urgent need for a cloud application. Because cloud services are so easy to provision, the decision is made to take that application for a test drive and allocate the resources necessary to support it. This can lead to two outcomes.
The cloud application does what you need it to do and usage expands. But because you were in such a hurry to get started, nobody took the time to analyze the costs involved. How many people need to use the application? Will training be necessary? What about user support? How much will cloud subscription costs increase as demand increases? Lack of planning can lead to major cost overruns.
Suppose you decide against using the application or service. Who is in charge of shutting it down? Who is making sure storage and other resources that were allocated for this application are released and made available to other applications? In many cases, cloud budgets are busted because money is wasted on services and resources that aren’t being used.
These problems only get worse in a multi-cloud environment. More cost confusion and waste across more cloud providers and applications only increases the risk that you’ll exceed your cloud budget.
Of course, a serious shortage of cloud expertise doesn’t help either. Research from Rackspace revealed that a lack of cloud expertise has caused 71 percent of organizations to lose revenue. The total cost of the cloud skills gap worldwide is estimated at more than $258 million. Sixty-five percent of organizations believe more cloud expertise would help them become more innovative, while 42 percent said a lack of skills is causing a lag in the deployment of cloud platforms.
Most organizations can’t afford to compete for talent that’s scarce and expensive. That’s why more and more companies are turning to managed service providers (MSPs) to close the skills gap and keep cloud costs under control. An MSP has insight into which cloud services are worth your investment. They know how to avoid costly delays by developing a strategy for implementation and managing a smooth migration to a cloud platform. Once you’re up and running in the cloud, an MSP can remotely monitor your cloud services to optimize performance and resource utilization and avoid the pitfalls that increase costs.
In addition to keeping a lid on costs, an MSP can deploy and remotely manage advanced security tools to protect your data and applications in the cloud. An MSP will also stay on top of an increasingly complex regulatory landscape and help ensure that the cloud platforms you use meet minimum compliance requirements.
Managed services from Verteks provide you with more reliable performance and more predictable expenses. Let us help you stick to your cloud budget and develop an effective cloud strategy that supports your business goals.
