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Pressure is mounting on companies to extract a competitive advantage from digital technologies and Information Systems. In today’s economy, there are entire enterprises that exist solely to process data and information. This leads IT professionals, corporate management, and Line of Business (LOB) owners to aggressively pursue digital transformation objectives to remain relevant in the industries in which they compete.
The message of the Public Cloud providers–for example, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud – entices companies and in particular, application developers, to develop and deploy next-generation applications in the Public Cloud. Computer scientists learn early on that reuse of code improves productivity, and the Public Cloud platforms and their associated tools are attractive to programmers looking for time saving and quality tested products that they do not have to develop from the ground up.
The business case for the Public Cloud is simple to state and to understand. The impact of the messaging frequently leaves potential customers with the impression that the traditional company-owned and maintained on-premises Data Center no longer has a role in the world of enterprise IT. Many organizations have chosen what is called a “Cloud First” strategy.
The notion of “Cloud First” is to guide investments towards the Public Cloud as companies modernize their IT infrastructure. This philosophy assumes that having all applications run in the Public Cloud is the only logical course of action, a concept promoted by the Public Cloud providers.
The reality is that many application workloads will not benefit from being run in the Public Cloud, for the simple reason that such a solution is frequently more expensive when compared to running that same application on-premises in a customer-owned Data Center. Public Cloud providers deliver elegant solutions which are all-encompassing and are well implemented and supported. However, their services are expensive. This detail is not always obvious when comparing the two different deployment models.
Today, the most widely accepted approach for digital transformation is to pursue a Hybrid Cloud strategy, taking advantage of the best of both worlds – on premise (a Private Cloud) in combination with the Public Cloud. Companies can choose the best platform for running their workloads on a case-by-case basis, as opposed to using a single approach for all workload requirements. Customers can choose to move to a cloud operating model without totally moving all workloads to one or more Public Cloud providers, taking advantage of the discipline and processes associated with the Cloud, while using resources that reside either on-premises or in the Public Cloud.
In this white paper, real-world workload scenarios are considered, comparing the economics of deploying those workloads both on-premises and in the Public Cloud (in this comparison exercise, Amazon Web Services is used).
IT managers must realize that application developers are an important audience that the Public Cloud providers sell their services to. Not only does the technology available in the Public Cloud empower developers, but an entire career development path has been articulated which allows them to see their importance in the overall ecosystem. Entire new careers have been developed around the Public Cloud (“devops,” “devsecops”), making developers strong advocates of the Public Cloud providers.
Confronted with this, IT managers and the Data Center services they provide to users, as well as the legacy processes and procedures used to manage that infrastructure, are sometimes viewed by developers in a negative light. The Public Cloud promotes a narrative that a traditional customer Data Center is populated with out-of-date hardware, with associated slow response times, cumbersome administrative procedures, and inadequate resources to enable developers to be productive in rolling out new application functionality quickly.
Ideally, IT operators need to expand their service to more closely match the type of experience that application developers and general end users enjoy when dealing with the Public Cloud – utilizing a self-service consumption model, modern abstraction layers, and tools to provide the capabilities that teams need to succeed in the digital transformation objectives of the business. Fortunately, technologies do exist to make this happen and with their implementation, IT managers can leverage the economics and cost savings that are associated with an on-premises infrastructure when compared to the cost of using the Public Cloud.