Thinking of moving to the Cloud in 2022?
Whether you have been watching Netflix or using Office365 whilst working from home you will have had first-hand experience of cloud computing. According to Forrester’s “Predictions 2020: Cloud Computing” report, the combined global public cloud services market size reached $299.4 billion in 2020 and will continue to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 29.2% in 2019-2025. While public cloud services account for a significant portion of the overall cloud market, the share of private cloud infrastructure is growing at a similar pace. According to a report by Statista, enterprises spent $72.9 billion on private cloud solutions in 2020 and will grow at a CAGR of ~28% in 2021-2027.
So, what is cloud computing?
Cloud computing is on-demand access to computing resources using the internet. Allowing your applications, servers, data storage, development tools, networking capabilities etc to be hosted at a remote data centre, managed by a cloud services provider (or CSP). The CSP makes these resources available for a monthly subscription fee or bills customers according to their usage. In simple terms cloud computing is accessing your data and information that is hosted on servers elsewhere or someone else’s servers.
What is the difference between public and private cloud?
Cloud computing can be adopted using either public or private cloud offerings. Public cloud computing is usually delivered via the internet and shared across organisations, using off-premises Information Technology (IT) capabilities or applications, provided by others. Traditionally private cloud is cloud computing that is dedicated solely to your organisation, on-premises enablement of cloud capabilities with existing IT. However, the world of cloud computing is continuously evolving.
So, if you are thinking of moving to the cloud which is the best option to adopt – public or private cloud?
Those in favour of public cloud argue that the ability to consume IT and related services on a pay-per-use model, the speed of access to resources and the flexibility to add and drop capacity make it appealing. Public cloud is often chosen as it is thought to be more cost-efficient. Many are attracted by the low starting costs and the strong brand recognition behind Azure and AWS. However there are hidden costs of performance remediation, staffing and security gaps to be taken into consideration. Horror stories of public cloud fees escalating, without the customer noticing, litter the internet. From single users racking up $2000 bills in a month to corporate development teams running up $80,000 a day in bills. It is not that public cloud costs are hidden but rather that visibility of the charges is complicated to decipher.
Those in favour of private cloud capabilities – either on site or in a private hosted environment expound the virtues of the high levels of management visibility, control, security, privacy and physical data proximity. They extol the peace of mind provided by knowing exactly where your key business client data resides at all times. The physical data proximity is good for disaster recovery and enables good governance – as it is easier to write a policy around data when it is accessible and can easily be found. Although the initial costs for private cloud may prove more expensive than public cloud there is a real cost advantage to private cloud when scaling predictable workloads.
What is hybrid cloud?
It is easy to see that both private and public cloud offer useful elements for businesses migrating to the cloud. Another area of growth, among the cloud trends, is hybrid cloud. This option represents a middle ground between the public/private offerings and can provide the flexibility needed by most businesses on this journey. Hybrid/multi-cloud architectures are a combination of public clouds, on-premises computing and private clouds in your data and this approach is gaining momentum. In their “Cloud Trends in 2020: The Year of Complexity, and its Management” report, 451 Research said that hybrid/multi-cloud is emerging as the predominant strategy for managing digital IT and business transformation, with 62% of enterprises pursuing a hybrid IT strategy.
Whichever option you choose it is clear cloud computing is here to stay. The 2020 IDG Cloud Computing research survey found that cloud computing is now fully embedded into business strategy, as 92% of the organisation’s members say their IT environment (infrastructure, applications, data analytics, etc.) is in the cloud to some extent today and this is expected to grow to 95%.
If you want to discuss your cloud options with the amatis team contact us here: