Why Even Bother to Move to the Cloud, Anyway?
Humio sponsored this post.
There has been an explosion in articles, blog posts and related content about different technologies that support the move to the cloud. However, most assume the organization is in the process of or has already made the shift. So, in fact, the issue for many organizations is why they should invest in such a major and often disruptive project, to begin with.
In this post, we describe and detail the reasons why your organization should even mull making the shift.
Here is the short answer: There are many good reasons to make the move to the cloud. Among these are scaling efficiently for growth; reducing the need to manage and support the IT infrastructure; boosting speed to market; maintaining software reliability; ensuring privacy and security; and managing unexpected bursts of activity.
Companies that begin investigating cloud solutions find that moving to the cloud makes it easier to manage hardware and software across growing organizations. Rather than maintaining stacks of servers and unique instances of software, they save time and do more by deploying standardized cloud-based services where the management of the infrastructure is done by the cloud provider.
Scalability
Most companies begin to look at cloud-based solutions when they are growing beyond the ability to effectively support that growth. Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions can be instantly spun up to support the needs of systems and processes that support additional employees and a growing list of customers.
Managing and Supporting the IT Infrastructure
By adopting Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), organizations effectively offload the management of servers and software to cloud providers, freeing up resources that can be used in other areas of the business. In addition, businesses can standardize processes and controls. For example, policy controls that create uniform rules across all servers make it easy to add additional servers — a significant improvement over manually setting up individual on-premise servers over several months. Centralize dashboards and reports can be configured to instantly know what’s happening on-premise and in the cloud and make modifications in real-time.
Boosting Speed to Market
As the cloud matures, there are countless cloud-based services and apps that solve company and customer needs. SaaS solutions are all made to work together seamlessly and implementing them is often as easy as connecting an API. Most can be rapidly deployed and have almost no impact on IT resources. This means that products or services can be rolled out to customers in far less time, boosting speed to market, outmaneuvering competitors, and growing sales.
Working in the cloud, developers have access to new environments that allow them to test, experiment, and get new ideas in front of their clients or customers quickly. Doing this in an on-premise system would take months to set up, even before they could start testing.
Maintaining Software Reliability
Employees and customers rely on software that simply works. Because of the inherent flexibility and built-in redundancy of cloud platforms, the operating environment is more available and applications are more reliable no matter what device or operating system is used. For example, by automating with Kubernetes, there are no longer single points of failure like those found in on-premise services and applications running in the cloud are reaching near-100% uptime.
Ensuring Privacy and Security
Cloud-native systems and software are constantly evolving to meet ever-increasing privacy and security standards. By using the latest SaaS technology, companies are better prepared to comply with regulations. To stay ahead of GDPR, Privacy Shield, HIPAA, PCI-DSS, SOX, COPPA, or dozens of other global regulations, it’s easier if they’re current with SaaS tools.
Managing Unexpected Bursts of Activity
With increased reliance on technology from customers — not to mention the proliferation of the Internet of Things — comes an explosive growth in data. It’s not unusual for companies to manage hundreds of terabytes of data flowing through their systems every day. Managing this amount of data and the bandwidth with on-premise-only solutions is nearly impossible. Many businesses are impacted by data bursts that threaten to crash their systems.
Cloud Platforms-as-a-Service (PaaS) are built for this type of volume, and can manage everything from an unexpected spike in user traffic to a tenfold increase of data volume overnight. By adopting a cloud-native or hybrid-cloud system, organizations subscribe to flexible hosting so they pay for what they need at the moment.
Advances in modern cloud technology provide sophisticated ways of managing massive amounts of streaming data, with no perceivable latency and instant response. Companies that have deployed cloud native systems to deal with these demands have happier employees and more loyal customers.
About Humio
To understand what’s happening across complex environments, tools like Humio provide visibility to streaming logs and event data. By monitoring this type of data the moment it happens, engineers, developers and security professionals make sure their environment is healthy and performing as expected. When it’s not, they can search through the data to find out exactly what happened and prevent it from causing ongoing problems.
We invite you to see how Humio’s modern architecture redefines what is possible with log management. Find out more by visiting our website: Humio.com.
You’ll also find lots of useful information on the Humio blog, and informative talks and demos on the Humio YouTube channel. To hear from Humio developers, customers, and partners, listen to our podcast series: The Hoot. Subscribe, visit and share your comments.
Join online communities like Slack (our engineers are active in Humio’s Slack channel). You’ll find inspiration, tips for getting started and answers to questions you might have. And share your experience as you go.
Get started with Humio by downloading a free 30-day trial (on-premise or Cloud). After a few searches, you’ll understand why we’re excited about how easy and how fast it is.
Feature image via Pixabay.
