Cloud IaaS – One Size Does Not Fit All

Tim Beerman is Chief Technology Officer for Ensono.

“Do more with less.” It’s an increasingly common phrase heard by CIOs as they watch their budgets remain flat or shrink, and the scope of their IT responsibilities grow.

IaaS cloud services is here to the rescue. Well, possibly. Established and new cloud offerings promise to increase productivity, reduce hardware and software costs, and provide scalability. Of course, these services come at a cost both in money spent on services and resources as well as training to leverage them appropriately. Optimally implementing a new cloud service to meet specific enterprise requirements can be challenging and time consuming. And more, leveraging cloud IaaS often requires CIOs to hire and/or train new resources to understand the capabilities and limitations of the cloud platform. Understanding this, CIOs are beginning to look to experienced IT service providers as a cost-effective way to implement and manage the cloud service infrastructure.

An experienced IT service provider that understands best practices aligned with a particular enterprise IaaS can make an enormous difference in the ROI of the entire endeavor. Unfortunately, a service offering that fits one client may not fit another. CIOs will generally be well served if their IT partner can provide the insight required to help establish a meaningful baseline based on the client’s vision and cloud service capabilities. This guarantees the clients’ short-term goals and future needs are met, and that the service can be effectively managed and its value determined.

With customization options available in many complex IaaS offerings, how can you leverage a service provider to determine the best combination of capabilities? The following approach could be a great place to start:

Cloud IaaS providers build services to cover a wide range of future and current needs and services. While it may seem efficient, it can leave many clients with less reliability or more services and cost than they actually need. But, by using this approach, clients are optimally positioned to get the most out of their cloud service. Having an experienced partner, one that understands the client’s needs and infrastructure, as well as the IaaS offering, can speed up implementation, improve results, and save money.

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