Calculating the return on investment (ROI) for any digital enterprise initiative is tricky. There are so many factors to consider, most of which involve a decision to invest in new digital resources vs sticking with current approaches. The analysis is typically informed by asking, “What business value will be advanced by a new approach?”
By using an either/or approach, you might consider the cost of deploying your infrastructure in a public cloud vs the equivalent of those resources on premises. Hybrid cloud means choosing the right-fit environment for the workload, so this is a good start.
When making the ROI calculation, consider the cost for the resources as well as the time to deploy them in the cloud or on-premises. Your goal is to identify quantifiable savings. However, don’t dismiss that some of your choices might take less time and cost less while not achieving the innovation that you’re really looking to get. Make sure that in addition to time and cost factors, elements like the experience of the users in your environment or the future benefits from adopting a system might cost more in the beginning but have a better long-term benefit.
Getting a lower cost and shorter time-to-value is important but it’s far from the whole picture. Let’s look at the following summary of key analysis factors as you consider possible outcomes for hybrid cloud ROI.
Public Cloud vs Public Cloud
Shopping for a public cloud provider for your hybrid cloud strategy is not going to be easy. Recently, all three major public cloud providers have claimed “all-in” to hybrid cloud. Microsoft Azure boosts its Azure Stack for data center development for enterprises. Google recently released Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) On Prem to help enterprises manage Kubernetes clusters anywhere. Amazon Web Services (AWS) at their recent re:Invent 2018 conference released AWS Outpost, for providing their cloud experience on-prem.
Consider that choosing one over the other might also be influenced by a strategic position of your organization or the public cloud providers. If you’re a big retail customer, for example, you might not want to invest in AWS because of its obvious connection to Amazon’s online shopping business. In another case, your staff might be partial to a Microsoft Windows environment and would lose out on the expertise that might get underutilized in another public cloud environment.
Public Cloud vs Data Center
For a new business, IT at your fingertips in the cloud that scales on demand will probably be your best bet. In this case, you would then do the analysis in the previous section and pit the public clouds against each other. On the other hand, most large enterprises that have been in business for a decade or so will have a more complicated analysis. Most of their IT departments would concede that they have over 50% of their infrastructure on premises in one or more data centers across the globe.
Adopting an incremental or trial and error approach seems to be what most organizations are doing with such a heavy on-prem footprint. Several of our customers have reported that they’ve moved infrastructure to the cloud only to move in back on-prem due to unexpected costs. They encounter security, control, or even a competitive factor like the one previously mentioned about a retailer not going with AWS. The ROI calculation would first start by comparing the cost to run services in a public cloud versus those same services on premises.
Hybrid Cloud Delivery
Here’s where it gets more complicated—the way that enterprise users consume resources to achieve digital business objectives. Enterprises with a deep bench in the IT department might have systems in place in which delivering cloud resources are tied to IT service requests. This is typically done through ticketing systems while provisioning is done by IT operations.
In a DevOps environment, the public cloud resources might be available as self-service within each cloud environment—responsibility and control are more distributed. A cloud delivery platform that connects to hybrid cloud resources for the entire enterprise can enable Self-Service IT and User Empowerment that can have an incredibly positive effect on ROI.
Other factors to consider in the time-to-value consideration of ROI, include complexity versus ease of use for any system in place. as well as Extensibility to Future and Legacy Technology.
CloudBolt provides a single platform for hybrid cloud delivery that enables significant ROI for faster time-to-value and the ability to empower end users to innovate without being tied up in the complexity of configuration in multiple clouds.
If you’ve ever tried to get a job in software, you’ve likely been given the advice to go check out meetups—networking events where like-minded people go to meet others with similar interests. Some folks might be turned off by the term “networking event”, associating them with rooms full of strangers and uncomfortable schmoozing, but meetups are so much more than that. Let’s talk about the benefits of meetups, why we at CloudBolt love them, and what we’re doing to support the awesome people who make them happen.
Why go to meetups?
If you’re a developer looking to learn a new skill, a meetup can be one of your best resources. There are meetups for all sorts of tech topics, from machine learning to MySQL. Here in Portland, searching the “tech” category on meetup.com returns over 300 groups, so if there’s a specific subject you want to learn there’s probably a meetup for it. Many of these meetups involve presentations where you can learn from people’s real-world experience, where you not only get the chance to hear their expertise but also to ask them your own questions and enhance your understanding.
Meetups also offer a great chance to practice your skills. Instead of having presentations, many meetups are gatherings of people who want to work on their projects, but could use a place to do so and a community to help discuss ideas. Often you will find mentors who are experienced in the meetup’s subject and are willing to lend a helping hand with the work you’re trying to do.
Of course, we don’t want to imply that networking isn’t a reason to go to meetups. Meetups are full of organizers and members who are passionate about their subject and are welcoming towards those who want to learn more. Meetups can also be a way to connect for groups that are traditionally underrepresented in tech. Talking to people at meetups is a great way to learn about interesting work going on in your area and to learn about the other communities and organizations that people are involved with.
And yes, meetups can help you get a job. My first meetup was for a web framework I was just starting to learn in a town I had recently moved to, and I went in feeling extremely nervous. To add to my nerves, half of the members turned out to be people that had interviewed me for a job earlier that day. But meeting them outside the interview room, I saw how friendly they were and how much they enjoyed their work. I left feeling better about the job, and they must have felt better about me because I got an offer shortly after. My story involved coincidence and luck, but meetups allow for this kind of chance connection to lead to great new opportunities.
CloudBolt and Meetups
At CloudBolt, we want to support our community meetups, and the main way we do that is through sponsorship. CloudBolt has been a sponsor of the Portland Python User Group, providing food and drink for attendees so they don’t have to spend the whole time hungry. We want to help foster communities where people can learn, grow, and connect, and this is how we contribute.
We’re also looking for more ways to contribute going forward. In early 2019, our Portland team is moving to a larger office with space to start hosting meetup events. We’re also looking to contribute by giving more talks, and we’re thinking about how we can share what we’ve learned at CloudBolt with the local developer community.
We also sponsor meetups because we want people to know that we’re hiring! We have lots of exciting projects that we want to work on, but we need more engineers to help us do so. We’re looking for people with lots of different skills, and our list of positions is always updating.