The Cloud Computing Challenge
Cloud Computing is one of the fastest growing markets within the IT industry, with organisations across every vertical market and every scale of organisation benefitting from the consumption of Cloud Services. This has spawned a number of providers each with their own opinion on what “good” looks like and very few offering an independent opinion on best practice for their customer.
Despite the rapid growth in this space it is a market place still in its relative infancy with organisations seeking to understand how best to utilise Cloud services and the impact that they could have on their business. These organisations are aiming to gain clarity on:
• The tangible business benefit of Cloud Services
• Which services can be migrated to the Cloud
• The most appropriate provider for their specific requirement
• How these services can be migrated without negatively impacting the business
From a business perspective, Executives are typically being driven to reduce cost, enable the business to deliver new
Nephos Technologies Cloud Readiness Assessment Service
services to market faster and retain high value employees. They focus on managing and delivering services and not an asset. Cloud Services support these requirements.
In many cases internal IT departments have little time to innovate and drive value back to the business due to the level of infrastructure that they are asked to manage, infrastructure that can only grow over time. Not all services are suited to Cloud delivery models and as such IT are asked to manage the traditional infrastructure as well as the Cloud environment. This delivery and ongoing management needs to be controlled to preserve the level of service delivered to the business.
Different parts of the business pull in different directions, its natural, but this shouldn’t inhibit your ability to innovate and benefit from Cloud services. Without a strategy for the delivery of services success will be hard to come by and you will suffer from Cloud sprawl. The most dynamic and successful businesses in your sector will be the ones that utilise Cloud services in the most appropriate way, being able to react to market changes and new services quicker.
How Can Nephos Technologies Help?
As an independent Cloud Services Broker, Nephos Technologies works in collaboration with our customers, listening to your requirements (both business and technical) and translating those requirements into an overarching Cloud strategy, and executing on any elements of the recommended strategy should we be asked to do so.
Cloud is a business rather than technical solution and Nephos’ consultative approach enables us to translate your overall business strategy and make recommendations as to how Cloud Services can support that strategy; we can provide the following information as part of that review process:
Business Assessment
Our business assessment involves the interaction of one of our consultants with line of business heads to understand the following aspects of your business:
• Business Strategy/Plans: How is success measured?
• Business Targets: What are the targets for the business, this may be based on new customer acquisition, talent retention or acquisition or new market development for example.
• Financial Targets: We want to understand the financial position of the organisation and the commercial pressures on the relevant lines of business to reduce costs
• Application Usage: We want to understand the core services that your business utilise and their priority within the business
• Business Continuity: What is your process for business continuity, what service levels must you achieve to ensure minimum impact to the business if you were to invoke your business continuity policy
Technology, Process and People – The Key to Your Cloud Strategy
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Technical Assessment
As part of the technical assessment we consider the following core aspects:
• Data Security: What are the security requirements for locating your data and for things like encryption, what external regulation are you impacted by
• Application Compatibility: What services are suited to a Cloud delivery model, how easily can they be converted and what is the cost and infrastructure requirement for doing so
• Storage Requirements: What are the current storage environments, requirements for today and likely growth in the future
• Compute Requirements: What are the core services in place and what are their compute requirements
• Connectivity Requirements: what are the connectivity requirements for specific applications, they may be able to be “cloudified” but can the connectivity support it and will it affect service
• Service Operations: What service levels are required to support business operations for individual services?
Financial Assessment
As part of our review process, and as part of any business case that we construct, we seek to understand the cost impact for the business. We assess some key cost components and compare those to the likely cost of delivering like for like services in the Cloud
• Capital Expenditure Review – review of the current cost base and cost of expansion in line with projected growth
• Operational Expenditure Review – review of the current OPEX cost base, projected future cost base
• Environmental Expenditure Review – what is the current environmental footprint of the existing infrastructure and the projected growth of the infrastructure
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Our findings are then presented to you in a management report, which is yours to own and do with as you see fit, but Nephos Technologies also has the ability to execute against your recommended strategy and support you in the migration to Cloud..
Summary
Nephos Technologies provides our customers with an independent view of your current infrastructure, the opportunity that Cloud Services provides specific to your business and the potential delivery route to execute on that plan. Our engagement considers the business, technical and financial aspects of your journey to the Cloud to give a rounded strategy with true business benefits.
Nephos Technologies will provide a free of charge 2-‐hour workshop to understand your requirements and to begin this process. For more information contact us on [email protected]
Nephos Technologies Suite 18250, Lower Ground Floor, 145-‐157 St John Street, London, EC1V 4PW
www.nephostechnologies.com