by Michael Pascuzzi
Digital transformation and innovation are becoming the keystone of modern business strategy. Automating facilities, collecting and analyzing more information, streamlining actions, and creating fresh ideas all require complex procedures. Complex doesn’t have to mean complicated. Moving processes to cloud architecture is viable and introduces high ROI possibilities. However, moving is not without cost.
Where Cloud Costs the Most
Business units often move to the cloud independent of the whole, obscuring the visibility of cloud resource consumption.
It’s become all too easy for anyone within the organization to buy or subscribe to cloud services and bypass centralized procurement or specified procurement policies. These bypasses lead to unforeseen, unplanned, unbudgeted spends.
When it comes to IaaS, IT spending can grow even faster. Without the right tools in place cloud resources are not optimized; servers can be running 24/7 unnecessarily, and expensive software can be left idling on forgotten servers. Compounding the issue vendors are not forthcoming when it comes to detailing which services have been run up and by whom — resulting in organizations being unable to attribute exact costs of IT spending to the right business unit.
Optimization of Cloud ROI
With visibility into what individual business units are using, the IT department can then begin the process of cost optimization. This type of optimization is a great way to understand end-user needs and preferences. It is also an opportunity to ask users about the value of the technology they have deployed and what problems it is solving. Knowing this can help other business units solve similar issues through better pan-enterprise deployment of such technologies.
Cloud Economics and Collaboration
It’s important to note that many business units require access to the same information. Individual copies throughout a business are redundant and potentially spreads misinformation; this is where cloud economics meets collaboration. Nowadays, it seems inconceivable, and almost lousy form, that co-workers would send hundreds of versions of the same word document across an organization via email. Instead, using a chat platform can help colleagues stay connected wherever they are, but everyone has to be on the same page. For many businesses, Office 365 provides software solutions to achieve these goals, allowing many users to edit a single document concurrently, in real-time via Word.
Still, many enterprises use on-premises Microsoft Office, and while that is a great tool, Office 365 takes collaboration to the next level. The Cloud Easy service from Crayon helps organizations migrate to Office 365 to achieve that next level.
Enhancing the collaboration efforts of your business can be impeded if you lack the appropriately skilled resources. The easy button to overcome such issues is to lean on an expert partner like Crayon to smooth your organization’s digital transformation journey to the cloud.
Interested in learning more about combating increases in IT spending? Don’t miss Crayon at The 20’s upcoming VISION Conference!
And to learn more about The 20 and how we can help your business, be sure to check us out here.