Sourcing Strategy For Cloud Services

Over the past decade the landscape of information technology infrastructure has undergone a massive transformation. Cloud services offer flexibility and cost-efficiency, enabling organizations to innovate faster and stay flexible and competitive in an evolving digital economy. However, the key to reaping the benefits start with an effective sourcing strategy. The below explores a few important areas to consider.

Assess your Workloads

Not all workloads are created equal, and not all cloud providers are equally suited to the requirements of some of your applications. Analyze you existing application and workloads to determine which can be migrated to the cloud and if a hybrid approach is required. Consider factors like data sensitivity, regulatory compliance, performance requirements, and integration complexity. This assessment will inform your choice of cloud services model – Infrastructure as a Services (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), or Software as a Service (SaaS)

Choose Your Cloud Model

Different cloud models offer varying degree of control, management, and customization. Depending on your organization’s capabilities and needs, you might opt for a public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid set-up. The most familiar set-up is a public cloud model which are hosted by third-parties’ providers (Most notable hyperscalers - AWS, GCP, Azure). However, private cloud arrangements where a provider provides dedicated resources to a single organization combines the benefits of cloud computing with security controls of an on-premises infrastructure.

 Fundamental Requirements

1) Reliability and Performance - Look for providers with a proven track record of uptime and performance. Ensure you understand the credits available for any service disruption.

2) Cost Structure – Understand the pricing model as it relates to your environment. Consider pay as you go vs discounted consumption model.

3) Scalability – The potential provider should be able to scale services(and resources) as your business demands change.

 4)Security Measures – Evaluate the provider’s security protocol and compliance certification to ensure your data remains protected.

 5) Approach & Methodology – Understand what resources the provider will have to assist with the migration and associated cost.

Support and SLAs – Evaluate the level of customer support offered and the terms outlined in the SLAs.

Data Governance

Ensure your sourcing strategy aligns with data policies and compliance regulations specific to your industry. Data policies and industry-specific regulations should be factored into your decision-making process. If your organization does not have clearly defined data policy for storage environments it may be a good to establish one prior to finalizing a deal with a provider.

 Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity

A robust disaster recovery and business continuity plan should be integral to your cloud sourcing strategy. Confirm that your provider offers backup and recovery options and test these processes regularly to ensure data integrity and availability.  There are many options when it comes to business continuity with a cloud provider. Most organization would prefer 100% percent availability, however, down time is always an option, if you plan on accepting an outage, you should ensure you fail gracefully, with emergency downtime notification page and responses.

Finally, it is important to define clear objectives. The move to hosted services(or a hosted infrastructure) should also be aligned the organization’s long term strategic strategy and should enable digital transformation.