3 Questions to Drive Your Enterprise Cloud Architecture

Featured article by Jim Nolle, Oracle Cloud Computing Consultant

If you are thinking of moving your business to the cloud, you must consider the unique challenges your company faces. Cloud technology in all its mutations is supposed to increase efficiency in your operations, protect your company’s data and also improve your bottom line. However, this only works if you have in place a solid strategy to drive your enterprise cloud architecture.

Looking Before Leaping

Before you integrate cloud technology in your enterprise system, it is important to evaluate the entire project with your team. After all, many technologies are emerging today and then fizzling out after much hype to the detriment of the vanguard investors who integrate them without foresight. There is a proliferation of cloud-based solutions from IAAS (infrastructure as a service) to SAAS (software as a service) and everything in between.

There is no gainsaying the important place of the cloud in modern computing solutions; from data storage, hosting, minimizing capital expenditures with operations expenditure (OpEx) model among other areas, cloud technology is ubiquitous in computing solutions today.

Before you fall for the ‘put it in the cloud’ fit-for-all solution, make sure you have a strategy in place. Ask yourself these three questions to get insight on how to manage your enterprise cloud architecture:

1. What are the business objectives and are there any systems and processes which will benefit by moving to the cloud?

Without concise goals and objectives in your business, you will never have a solid strategy to drive your move to the cloud. Once the objectives are identified and defined, look at the systems and processes which can benefit from this move. If you want to reduce hardware in your facility, applications with low utilization are good candidates for a move to the cloud. Applications that require enhanced security can also be moved to the cloud. For other applications, a hybrid model is more suitable.

2. Which are the best resource pools?

Space needs in the cloud largely determine your cloud architecture approach. Oracle cloud services allow resource pooling to group data and applications to help optimize on your cloud purchase. In essence, you only purchase the space you need and ensure all of it is used. By defining the resource pools before the cloud purchase, you are able to optimize your spend whether you applying the IaaS approach or PaaS.

3. Does your team possess the new skills required on this paradigm?

It is easy to overlook the unique skills required and this could create a skill gap in your team. This can be costly and might disrupt your business operations. It is important to carry out a cloud adoption evaluation which highlights the new skills required in your engineering and operations teams. This allows you to source for these skills beforehand. If you are to train your staff, review the cost and time required as this will directly impact on your move to the cloud.

Like with adoption of any new technology, always make sure you are guided by your business needs and environment. While cloud technology solutions are without doubt important in the current computing environment, make sure you make a decision that suits your business.

Author Bio

Jim Nolle is an Oracle cloud computing consultant, writer and mentor at http://listertechnologies.com/ . He has been in the IT industry for 27 years and comments on topical issues in the industry. To learn more about cloud computing, visit this website.