Easy access to Cloud services like Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services (AWS) has triggered the biggest shift in the technology landscape in the past decade, making exciting and innovative new technologies readily available to businesses of all sizes.
Cloud technologies have driven enormous change that has impacted us all, from how we communicate and work, to how we access essential services like banking and healthcare to how we consume entertainment. Cloud has made everyone more mobile, made development of new applications more cost effective, enabled scale, and put the power of data front and centre.
Making the most of Cloud is a highly technical task with the added complexities of security, data governance, and cost management intertwined with the development process presenting new challenges to businesses wishing to avail of cost reductions, scale, and access to innovation.
Migrating to Cloud
Organisations with existing systems in place that want to use Cloud to improve their systems or tackle the cost of upgrading ageing technology are faced with the exciting but also daunting task of migrating to Cloud.
Cloud migrations present massive amounts of opportunity for radical transformations but they are also risky endeavours when not thought through and managed properly, which is where Minnock Technologies can help.
Migration projects require detailed analysis of the current state, insights into how things will operate in the Cloud, detailed architecture and development guidelines, and an appreciation of the constraints and other parameters that define the nature of the migration, for example restrictions due to cost and legal compliance or engineering for scale as part of the move. Knowing where to start and how to structure a migration helps to prevent costly and lengthy mistakes.
Minnock Tech has successfully delivered multiple highly effective Cloud migrations for various types and sizes of businesses and can apply the insights from these experiences to your migration to make the move to Cloud as quick and easy as possible, avoiding issues with projects never ending, data being moved unsafely, interruptions impacting business, and costs spiralling out of control.
Managing Cloud
The opportunities Cloud can give to a business are second to none, but with Cloud comes a set of management tasks that must be handled well to ensure safe operations.
Businesses wishing to avail of the Cloud to better manage or reduce costs need to understand the issues that can drive spending upwards beyond expectations and should be aware of how to monitor and control Cloud costs. To make savings, technical and commercial teams must become familiar with the advanced techniques available to avoid costs and the tools that can be used to realise the desired reductions, from optimising and right-sizing systems, to utilising reserved instances and making long-term spend commitments to lock in reduced pricing, many mechanisms are available to help with spend management.
Security in the Cloud introduces new concerns as organisations balance access to systems and mobility with their commitment to keeping data as safe as possible and reducing the risk of disruption or breaches. Cloud providers take security very seriously but businesses using Cloud have a responsibility to use the tools on offer as effectively as they can to keep themselves and their customers as secure as possible.
Additionally, organisations concerned with vendor lock-in or that have requirements to fulfil customer needs internationally in regions where their primary Cloud provider doesn’t operate, will be pleased to know that adopting Cloud in a business doesn’t mean having to depend on a single supplier. There are several different approaches that can be taken for using many Cloud and on-premises services together to reduce risks or to conduct business in-line with customer stipulations, though sophistication in multi-Cloud and hybrid Cloud set-ups does necessitate processes and management tools designed to reduce the friction of combining systems to allow workloads to move seamlessly across providers.
Minnock Technologies extensive experience in managing global as well as more localised, regional Cloud systems and on-premises data centres of all sizes is available to your organisation whenever you need. Our certified Cloud specialists can partner with you in crafting Cloud Management processes that will give you confidence in the control of your Cloud estate by providing verified results on every aspect under management from costs and security, through to future-proofing your systems to be ready for anything.
Cloud Engineering
Cloud opens the door to a new world of possibilities and stunning innovations that allow businesses to go further in serving their customers than ever before. Turning these possibilities into reality and making full use of the potential of Cloud leads to necessary shifts in how systems are constructed, meaning that technical teams may have to dramatically change how they think about delivering success.
In the world of Cloud everything is treated as software; Systems Administrators used to hardware problems need to adapt to this mindshift and introduce software development practices and procedures to their work, moving from the world of “racking and stacking” and towards continuous delivery and DevOps.
Engineering for Cloud allows for new and exotic technologies to be applied to business problems across areas like serverless and the use of containers, through to newer data technologies like NoSQL and other massively scaling database systems. Making best use of these newer technologies is really about understanding when to use them, and more importantly when not to use them, with sensitivity to the constraints of the organisation and customer needs of paramount importance, especially when factoring in portability or multi-Cloud requirements.
Furthermore, good engineering in Cloud addresses much more up front in the process. Topics like scale, security, redundancy, and high availability can be developed into systems from the beginning with teams only needing and understanding of what’s possible in order to get started.
Minnock Technologies offers Cloud Engineering services to help organisations of any size across industries get underway on Cloud and partners with customers all along their Cloud journey to pushing the boundaries of innovation and creativity.
Minnock Tech can provide Cloud Engineering to your business, partnering in Cloud development on your behalf to deliver systems to meet your requirements, while organisations with technical teams in place can have Minnock Tech provide targeted technical expertise for specific outcomes or to guide training initiatives to help teams move to generating value in the Cloud.
Contact Minnock Technologies to discuss your Cloud needs and find out how we can help by emailing: martin@minnock.ie.
Please see our Training Services page for details of how Minnock Tech can help you build skills in the area of Cloud Management and Engineering within your team or organisation.