Cloud Source

Four Steps to a Successful Cloud Adoption Strategy

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As cloud adoption accelerates, many enterprises that pursue digital transformation strategies for the purposes of cost reduction, increased productivity, or enhanced customer experiences often find that the reality falls short of expectations. Unexpected obstacles during migration can cause unforeseen costs or delays that eliminate many of the benefits that were expected.

Planning ahead for obstacles and anticipating delays can help solidify your plans for moving to the cloud and deliver the desired benefits. To ensure a successful cloud adoption, consider implementing the following steps in your strategy:

Assess and Address Talent Shortages: Your enterprise IT team may be the rare example of one that’s overstaffed and looking for tasks, but in most cases, it’s likely that you’ll need to examine whether you have the skills in-house for a cloud adoption strategy. In the long run, a cloud investment is likely to lessen the load for your IT team, but you may find that you require additional skills or resources to fill some gaps.

Test Your Network: Cloud adoption tends to take a toll on your infrastructure and many enterprises determine the best path is a simultaneous infrastructure upgrade. Particularly in the case where a unified communications technology solution is being implemented, the burden on connectivity is so critical that you may need to address network speed and performance. There are free tests available to examine how bandwidth volume and other factors are impacting network performance.

Software-defined wide area networking (SD-WAN) is becoming a common approach to solving some of the network complexity introduced with a cloud environment. With a virtual overlay, this networking solution offers better visibility, as well as traffic segmentation and prioritization for better use of bandwidth resources.

Reduce Risks: Risk can come in many different forms in a cloud environment, but there are a couple of areas that require prioritized attention. Consider whether you may want to pursue a multi-cloud approach rather than a single cloud in order to optimize workload placement and avoid provider lock-in. A multi-cloud approach can also provide some failover for a more solid business continuity strategy.

In addition, while a cloud adoption strategy is no longer feared as an inherently unsafe pursuit, it will change and broaden your security plane. Think through how your provider’s security policies intersect with your own and the features you’ll need in place to protect your data and systems.

Develop Governance: Closely related to risk, governance will allow your enterprise to create policies around authorization and processes for cloud adoption. The ease with which applications and platforms can be accessed often creates problems around shadow IT and cloud sprawl. Determine which members of your IT team are authorized to spin up a new cloud solution and what the process is for line-of-business managers interested in utilizing new, cloud-based technology.

Cloud transitions will always come with a few surprises, and we specialize in anticipating and mitigating those challenges before they derail your strategy. Contact us at Cloud Source to develop an effective plan for your cloud adoption strategy.

Five Reasons DaaS Is the Ideal Solution for the Remote Workforce

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Remote work offers increased flexibility and reduces some overhead costs for enterprises, but it comes with some challenges, including communication gaps, new potential security vulnerabilities, and delayed IT support. Many enterprises are utilizing desktop as a service (DaaS) to support the remote workforce through a third-party provider.

DaaS offers the following five benefits to enterprise employees:

Accessibility: With a traditional desktop, the user must be physically present at the computer to access information; however, with a DaaS solution, a cloud-hosted virtual desktop can be accessed anywhere at any time. The virtual desktop is housed in a remote cloud server that can be utilized through any connected device. In addition, quality providers ensure 24/7 availability so that your desktop is always accessible. 

IT Relief: Not only does the managed services provider handle all the management and troubleshooting of the solution, but they also have provisions according to the fluctuating needs of the organization. You can scale users, random access memory (RAM), and storage up and down as necessary.

Improved Security: Your business data is under constant threat, and this threat is only increased by the vulnerabilities introduced with a remote workforce. A reliable DaaS provider offers enhanced security features to protect your data, including encryption, ransomware protection, multi-factor authorization and authentication, patching, antivirus solutions, and network monitoring. A good cloud service provider will also offer regular backups in addition to disaster recovery solutions that store files at geographically dispersed data centers.

Cost-Efficiency: Transitioning to a remote workforce can be costly, requiring the installation of individual systems, plus WiFi routers and software upgrades, plus the IT resources to troubleshoot any problems. DaaS removes the need for hardware investments, and the managed services team takes the pressure off enterprise IT. DaaS can be accessed on any connected device, so the enterprise does not need to make any significant hardware purchases to transition to remote work.

DaaS also enables enterprises to hire the best talent, regardless of geographical location, while reducing the cost associated with a new hire.

Better Collaboration: Remote teams are particularly challenged when it comes to collaborating on a project or attempting to finalize decisions in a timely manner. Sending emails back and forth can introduce confusion into the process, and each time a change is made to an attached file, it risks being lost in the email chain. With a DaaS solution, employees are able to work together in a shared platform. Team members can access and edit files in real time.

Supporting the remote workforce with DaaS also reduces the need for in-person meetings, as well as eliminating the associated travel costs. Teams are able to collaborate more with fewer resources invested.

To explore the possibilities of DaaS to equip your remote workforce, contact us at Cloud Source. You’ll need a guide along the way as you consider the needs of your organization and identify the best DaaS solutions available.

Three Ways Enterprises Are Using Cloud Technology to Reduce the Carbon Footprint

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Across the globe, enterprises are prioritizing their digital transformations to accommodate work-from-home teams and improve reliability and scalability. Cloud technology allows for accelerated innovation and growth while reducing costs, offering enterprises more opportunities for achieving the agility that promotes superior customer experiences.

Even as they pursue these ambitious goals, there’s another – perhaps even more lofty – objective on the list of priorities. Enterprises are exploring ways to operate responsibly, choosing a cloud footprint that enables them to pursue sustainable technology practices.

Sustainable cloud adoption and the ability to support climate change initiatives is increasingly on the minds of enterprise IT as they choose next steps for their digital strategies. An analysis by Accenture demonstrated that through a sustainable cloud footprint, CO2 emissions could be reduced across the globe by 59 million tons annually, a 5.9% reduction in IT emissions. This is the equivalent of removing 22 million cars from the road.

Cloud providers continue to prioritize clean energy transitions, while enterprises are better equipped to reduce material waste and carbon emissions through advanced data analysis and process improvements. There is also workload flexibility, energy-efficient infrastructure, and improved server utilization that all makes it attractive to move to the cloud in terms of cost-efficiency. Public cloud delivers cost savings because it moves significant computing power off on-premise servers and networks while reducing IT labor as well.

There are three critical ways that enterprises are using cloud to reduce their impact on the environment, and they are easy steps for other organizations to implement:

Choose the Right Cloud Provider: Select a provider that actively measures and improves their cloud footprint. Your provider should be pursuing commitments that dictate how they plan and operate their data centers – as well as how they plan to retire them. Examine how they approach renewable energy generation, how data center hardware is reused or recycled, and how they are utilizing analytics for responsible management of assets and their operation. Choose a provider that embraces transparency in how they report carbon emissions in real time, tracking results against their goals for sustainability.

Prioritize Cloud Optimization: Enterprises can significantly reduce their carbon emissions through cloud technology, but it is critical to have the right level of ambition toward optimization. The enterprise must decide whether they are pursuing a strategic migration without redesign, the application of software engineering practices that embrace sustainability and application optimization. Reducing the cloud footprint is most effective when applications are designed specifically for cloud environments.

Pursue Sustainable Cloud-Enabled Innovation: Companies at the front of sustainable practices are pushing hard when it comes to innovation, looking for improvements beyond the data center. Cloud providers are increasingly working closely with enterprises as they demand longer-lasting hardware that is designed for modularity and circularity, presenting new opportunities for sustainability and improved profits.

Even as cloud technology solves a variety of challenges for enterprises supporting remote teams, looking for ways to reduce costs and improve elements like scalability and agility, they also present new opportunities for prioritizing sustainability. For more information on choosing cloud solutions to support your sustainability goals, contact us at Cloud Source.

How Virtual Desktop Technology Is Helping Companies Stay Afloat

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It’s the time of year when numerous guesses are being made for what technologies are going to hit big in 2021. Virtual desktop infrastructure is fast rising on the lists for many tech bloggers because this technology enables remote users better access to information they need to get the most out of their workday.

Virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) is certainly not new technology, but because of the workplace restrictions caused by the pandemic, it’s gotten a lot more attention. In fact, a Gallup poll report says beginning in March when the seriousness of the virus finally came to light, 28% of employers said all of their employees were working from home – but that number grew to 46% by September. Also in September, only 9% percent of employers said none of their workers were in a remote-work situation.

Better Accessibility

It’s numbers like those from Gallup that led to Computer World publishing an article called “Pandemic gives VDI a new lease on life.” The article says that with VDI, you get two major perks: cost and security, mainly due to the fact that desktop environments, operating systems, and apps are all running on a central server. VDIs can even be run on tablets and, in some cases, smartphones.

The following are just a handful of many benefits VDI users see:

  • Flexibility: You have more flexibility of endpoint maintenance with VDI. The right provider can offer upgrades, installations, and much more.
  • Increased productivity: Workers armed with the right tools can be quite productive in remote settings. Plus, IT personnel can focus on other mission-critical tasks while the provider does all the heavy lifting.
  • Security improvements: With your data centralized, VDI offers more protection against cyber criminals. You’re less likely to see a virus being shared, and backing up your data is incredibly simple.

There is also consistency to think about: with VDI, all virtualized desktops will have the same setup if you implement it that way. This can be a perk for keeping all users on the same page, so to speak.

Finding the Right VDI

You have many options in which provider you can turn to for your VDI. Getting the right solutions can be difficult unless you’re working with an agent that has experience with the many different technologies available today.

At Cloud Source, we have years of experience assisting clients by helping them choose the technology that propels them forward. We have a close relationship with more than 100 technology service providers, which makes us the perfect agent to help you lock down the virtual desktop platform that will increase productivity and help your organization better navigate the curveballs that so many businesses have been thrown during the pandemic. Contact us, and we’ll help you stay ahead of the competition.

Three Key Elements of a Successful Cloud Roadmap

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Whether your organization is pursuing a cloud-first strategy for digital transformation, or if your enterprise is at the beginning stages of testing out how the cloud fits with your technology plan, you need a cloud roadmap.

A cloud roadmap provides a structure and guideline for implementing new technology, keeping in mind your overall digital transformation strategy. It helps ensure your enterprise will arrive at the intended destination, rather than each department or manager implementing cloud solutions as needed without an overarching plan. While most organizations include a budget in their planning, there are three often-overlooked elements that should be included with your cloud roadmap:

Talent: Does your plan include a strategy for supporting cloud solutions with the necessary infrastructure? If so, your plan may need to include an expansion of your network team for handling the kinds of connectivity that bandwidth-hungry, high-performance cloud solutions demand. While there are options for outsourcing IT to managed services, including the management of software-defined wide area networking (SD-WAN) and other infrastructure support, it’s important to include this consideration as you map out your path to a cloud environment.

In order to plan for talent, be sure to think ahead about data storage needs, what kinds of technology principles your enterprise will follow, and the types of technology solutions your team wants to prioritize.

Buy-In: In many cases, a cloud roadmap may be best championed not by IT, but by the head of the marketing department. Many of the benefits gained through cloud technology are manifested in the customer experience, the domain of marketing teams. Even if IT spearheads the cloud roadmap process, it’s important to involve managers and directors across the organization, as well as having them identify members of their own teams for providing input.

It’s also important to include representatives from security, compliance, and finance, as well as members of the network team.

A Schedule: A cloud roadmap takes time to develop; and like your organization’s broader digital transformation strategy, it’s never finished. Create a timeline with your team that allows you to revisit the plan and make changes as your organization’s goals, budget, and needs change. Your cloud roadmap will see some new turns as you embark on cloud projects and discover challenges unique to your organization.

It’s important not to look at your cloud roadmap weekly, or even monthly, because you may lose sight of your bigger strategies. Revisiting the roadmap every other month to refine, and every three-to-six months for revisions should be adequate.

Does your organization need assistance in creating a cloud roadmap? Contact us at Cloud Source, and we will guide you through the process.

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328 S. Jefferson St. Suite 603
Chicago, IL 60661
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E: info@CloudSourceServices.com

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