3 Steps To Setting Up A Cloud-Ready Infrastructure

For the past couple of years, many businesses have faced an unprecedented challenge in the modern era: conducting business without letting employees and customers interact with each other face-to-face. While many companies suffered because of it, a handful was unaffected. The reason? They’re doing their business virtually online and with the help of cloud providers.

To combat such devastating scenarios – and possibly profit enormously – companies looked into digital transformation (DX) and found a cloud provider themselves. Many, most probably including you, are now looking at ways how they can implement DX and might have found out that setting up a cloud-ready infrastructure is one of the many steps they’ll need to take.

For most, they want to be cloud-ready because they want to be prepared for the inevitability that everyone will do everything on the cloud. Years ago, it was predicted that cloud data centres would process 94% of data and traditional data centres would process the remaining 6% by 2021. (1)

Whatever reason you have to prepare your infrastructure and find cloud service providers, your current question is, ‘How?’ This article will provide you with a simple guideline for setting up a cloud-ready infrastructure.

Aiming to have a cloud-ready infrastructure and take advantage of cloud services providers means you want to go through digital transformation. To go through DX, your first goal will be to change your company’s approach to information technology and your IT team’s role.

Traditionally, a company’s IT teams serve as gatekeepers to innovation. They have a massive influence over any technological changes in the company to ensure that everything runs as stable as possible. While they aren’t machines and made of metal, remember that they’re a key component of your IT infrastructure.

Also, if you try to introduce the many changes digital transformation can bring, they may become a major roadblock if you fail to convince them that this change is required and beneficial. Not to mention that it’s no secret that most IT departments and personnel hate cloud computing.

Primarily, many IT departments and personnel believe that a cloud service provider can eliminate their jobs. On the other hand, some hate cloud computing because of the lack of visibility, third-party data management, patch management, shadow IT, the difficulty of opting out, massive changes in job roles and many more. (2)

The next thing on your list is the budget. Look for all the platforms you’ll need and use in the coming years. You’ll also need to work with your IT team on this one. After that, you need to prepare your employees. Warn them about the changes that will happen. Train them as early as possible. Make them interested in those changes, and embrace the benefits that digital transformation can bring.

Once your company is ready for DX, it’s time to look at your IT infrastructure. Since you’re here, there’s a big chance your infrastructure’s deployed on your facilities – say that you have a server cluster in your office’s IT room – and you’re weighing your options.

• Will you want to forego your infrastructure and go fully digital and reliant on the cloud?
• Do you want to upgrade the necessary components of your IT infrastructure and make it cloud-ready?
• Will you want to replace everything brand-new and start all over again from scratch?
• Do you want to go hybrid and only retain the components you purely need on-site and rely on the cloud for everything else?

As you may have already looked at your options, time and budget constraints may be holding you back considerably. You already foresee the risk of halting your business operations should the infrastructure changes cause problems to your current workflow. You may be hesitating.

However, if you follow trends and base decisions on them, you should know that global spending on cloud computing has gone up by 8.8% from 2020 to 2021. At the same time, non-cloud or traditional IT infrastructure spending only increased by 1.5%. Based on these statistics, it seems highly favourable to go through this shift to cloud reliance in your business. (3)

Since you’re considering setting up a cloud-ready infrastructure, you may already be negotiating with or currently researching cloud vendors you’ll want to help you with your business. You may already have read an ad somewhere on the internet or on social media. You realised the cost benefits of letting third-party cloud service providers handle all the headaches you have with your IT infrastructure.

Before going ahead with those vendors, look for other public cloud providers. As of now, cloud technology is evolving at a rapid pace. One company may offer an excellent service package, but another may be offering all the new technologies for the same price.

To be quite honest, these third-party cloud infrastructures providers will do most of the legwork for you to make your infrastructure cloud-ready unless you have a highly competent IT team. After all, different vendors and different infrastructures have different setups. There’s no one way to ensure that all your components and clusters will be ready for every vendor – unless you want to replace everything you have or go full-on cloud computing. You need to get the one you’ll favour involved to go past this step.

In the end, it mostly boils down to cost when it comes to making your current infrastructure cloud-ready and going for a hybrid cloud setup. And if ever you change your mind and take a different path – whether going for full cloud computing or an overhaul of your infrastructure – it will still require careful thinking and lots of money.

1. “Global Cloud Index Projects Cloud Traffic To Represent 95 Percent Of Total Data Center Traffic By 2021”, Source: https://newsroom.cisco.com/c/r/newsroom/en/us/a/y2018/m02/global-cloud-index-projects-cloud-traffic-to-represent-95-percent-of-total-data-center-traffic-by-2021.html
2. “Why Some IT People Hate the Cloud”, Source: https://www.dsm.net/it-solutions-blog/why-some-it-people-hate-the-cloud?msclkid=6db3569ab4ad11ecaba6837d062b64f1
3. “Cloud Infrastructure Spending Closes Out the Fourth Quarter And 2021 With Strong Growth, According To IDC”, Source: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/cloud-infrastructure-spending-closes-fourth-193600285.html