There are many cloud providers out in the IT world right now, all vying for your business, and most are of varying sizes. Some are small and target those customers not willing to pay large amounts of money for a server in the cloud, whilst others are large with multiple capabilities.
Which is the correct cloud provider for your business though? Do you focus solely on the smaller company, look at a larger provider like AWS or Azure, or use a mix of the 2? This is what I hope to address in this particular article.
When looking at moving some, or all of your workloads to a cloud provider, there are a number of considerations you have to take into account. Failure to do so can fail the project, or just move it into operational hell as you try figure out why you’re not able to progress your environment as quickly as you want.
I’ve done a lot of solutions architecture around cloud for clients, and it’s always interesting to hear why they want to move to the Cloud, or even off it (yes, had that discussion as well). Almost always, the move to Cloud is to drop operational costs, whilst increasing functionality.
Smaller cloud providers might offer cheaper prices, but then you need to look at what sort of resources they’re offering you. They might be ring-fencing the use of compute to smaller workloads, meaning your large 8 vCPU, 128GB VM is not an ideal target for them at all, and you need to look at larger providers. The big benefit they would tout is the lower costs involved in setting up your environment, and (maybe!) the personal touch when it comes to logging calls. Why pick up a phone or email someone you have never met before and entrust them with your information and access to your workloads, when you can contact someone you’re most likely met before. The answer for me would be simple around this: smaller cloud providers might not necessarily have the skills development to keep up with the times in IT. Larger providers have that budget to provide training for their staff and enable them to stay current with the latest software and trends.
Why would this be a problem on a smaller provider? Using an engineer who has never seen your version of Windows or Linux, or the software you’re leasing monthly from them could result in calls taking much longer to resolve, leading to negative impressions of the provider themselves. Some of these would be largely unwarranted too, especially if the service offered to the end user is really good.
Further to this would be the evolution of the backend infrastructure. With a smaller environment, you might not necessarily be in a position to roll out your latest version of Windows Server until such time as it is supported. While there might be ways to circumvent this, you’d still be left in an unsupported situation. What would this mean to your business? Not being able to roll out the latest software or applications, possibly not allowing you to move off an unsupported OS environment.
While a number of smaller cloud providers do have bundled packages like firewalls, OS or applications, these might not necessarily mean mainstream products as run within your business. Especially true if you’re running in an enterprise environment. As such, this wouldn’t have a fit-for-purpose solution for your company.
So where would a smaller cloud provider fit in?
If you’re new in your cloud journey, and don’t want to make a big shift to consuming cloud, then they’re worth looking into. Getting resources on their platforms might be easier, especially if you’re just looking at running a smaller PoC of your workloads on a cloud platform.
Costs might be cheaper, and if you’re pressed for a budget, it’s worth checking what smaller cloud providers have to offer, and compare how this stacks up against larger providers. After all, keeping your costs down is key to the move to Cloud.
If your company is smaller and you can do with cutting costs of applications, then checking out what smaller cloud providers have is a good start. Different software might offer the same functionality at a fraction of the cost.
Good luck, but always, always do your homework on the provider before committing to anything!