As organisations embrace the cloud for their Digital Transformation projects, many are coming face-to-face with challenges relating to deployment and management. We hear from Garry Ackerman, CEO, Argantic, on the complexities of cloud-based infrastructure and the necessary steps organisations should take for successful migration.
Businesses worldwide have prioritised major Digital Transformation projects and are moving their data to popular cloud environments such as Microsoft Azure. Spend on cloud infrastructure has increased rapidly and although the cloud is extremely rewarding for companies that deploy and manage it properly, with the sophistication comes complexity.
Cloud skills shortage keep growing as more businesses migrate to cloud-based infrastructure and services. IDC says the global shortage of full-time developers will increase from 1.4 million in 2021 to 4 million in 2025.
Gone are the days where IT departments hired a few junior techies and let them learn as they go. Cloud is too complicated, the type of systems the cloud brings to the fore are too broad for a resident IT team to become proficient on – in the SMB space typically.
Cloud transformation projects are complex, they have many moving parts when it comes to data and applications. As a result, many companies underestimate the lift and planning cycle when reimaging a company’s infrastructure and ensuring a pathway for data and app transformation to streamline operations without creating downtime.
In the past, many IT solution providers offered free services if customer bought products from them. Many companies still think this is the norm, but the subscription margins no longer allow for this. To provide top-class services, IT solution providers now need to attract and retain very expensive resources.
When building capability in their IT departments, companies only have two options. They can either hire skills and when they become really proficient, it becomes expensive to retain them. Alternatively, they can sign a Service Level Agreement (SLA) with a solutions provider like Argantic, where they can ensure experienced and competent technical staff on demand.
Argantic realised that service agreement customers started embracing the value this model offered and appreciate the value that the combination of the cloud platform and its expertise offers.
With the shortage of skills in the cloud space, organisations need to commit to having people available when they need them. This means the best expertise is now only available through SLAs and technical staff will no longer be available on an ad-hoc basis.
In the past, IT would install a system and then was only contacted when there were problems. Cloud has also introduced the concept of continual improvement and value in IT. The tools available can be used to constantly focus on providing value to the organisation.
It is evident that almost without fail, customers that don’t have proper SLAs in place are being hit with cyberattacks. This often results in total data loss because they have no backups or it sets them back weeks while they try and recover the data.
