Introduction
Over the past decade the popularity of moving to the cloud, either fully or partially has steadily risen. The direction most companies took was to move to the cloud and embrace digital transformation. The COVID pandemic only hastened this move for many, with many companies doing a lift and shift to support an overnight remote workforce. But is this the right move for all companies, or should your company vacate the cloud? This answer isn’t a simple one, as with many things in life it depends.
The Rising Costs of Cloud Computing
Cloud computing costs have become stable or have slightly increased while the cost of hardware has decreased. For many the economic benefits of exiting the cloud make sense financially. At a time when cloud computing was taking off and hardware costs were rising the math was easy to do. Other potential savings were the data center costs itself and potentially few staff. It may make sense to look again at those costs wholistically to see if the cloud still makes sense. For some companies the cloud still maybe more economical, at some point in scale it may make more sense to host locally and retain those hard-won dollars.
Risk of Cloud Computing
For some this is an easy question, they don’t want others hosting their most precious resource their data. After all the cloud is just someone else’s data center shared amongst many other users. As the old saying goes, “The craftsman’s hand is the soul of his work.” There are many good cloud compute options out there, and various models to choose from. But in the end, it’s your data so it’s up to you to decide who can secure it properly. If you choose to move to the cloud or continue to reside in the cloud, be sure and understand the terms of service.
Staying Compliant
Do you have compliance requirements or infrastructure needs that require on premise networks and data centers. Many utilities by nature have a network, controllers, and servers that can’t be in the cloud. Others may need to run and air-gap or dark network. Tools to manage this type of network by their nature need to be on premise or have offline component to the cloud. It may not make sure to have a tool in place to manage these networks that resides in the cloud.
Failed or Poorly Implemented Migrations
During the COVID pandemic a lot of companies did the lift and shift to the cloud quickly without a lot of planning, they had no choice. Some have found afterwards that either the costs or benefits are not really a good fit. Planning the correct type of workloads to move to the cloud is important. For those in that camp it may be time to bring that workload back on premise if it makes sense for them.
Repatriation and Hybrid Models
Some will benefit from complete repatriation of their workload, while others may find it cost effective to run a hybrid model. Keeping things in the cloud that make sense and bringing home those that do not. While others may look to alternate cloud platforms or utilize MSPs to fill the gap.
Conclusion
Should you vacate the cloud? That is up to every company, but in some cases I think the case can be made to make that move. No one knows how things may change in the future but for now, it may make sense to evaluate the yearly costs of your cloud service. Validate the cost of either repatriating, hybrid or even using an MSP for some of those needs.
What do you think, I would love to hear your thoughts and experiences on the subject.
