A new way of delivering IT resources, with its technical specificities, its business model, a dynamic allocation of physical and virtual resources according to demand, a high elasticity capacity, and permanently measured service, the Cloud meets the needs of companies to enjoy more flexibility while reducing or optimizing costs.
Choose your service model between IaaS for Infrastructure as a Service, PaaS for Platform as a Service, and SaaS for Software as a Service as well as your deployment model including public cloud, private cloud, hybrid cloud, etc. requires significant reflection but regardless of the approaches considered, the implementation of the strategy remains just as crucial. In this article, you will list some of the best practices for setting up a cloud infrastructure within a company.
Best ways to set up cloud infrastructure
Setting up an IT infrastructure can be a significant investment. Choosing the right ways is therefore essential!
- Define your business needs and imperatives
The definition of needs is an essential prerequisite for any project management: the implementation of a cloud infrastructure within a company is therefore no exception. To define its needs in the most appropriate way possible, it will first be a question of establishing the positioning of IT with respect to the businesses, the different priorities and objectives related to the delivery of IT services including better quality service, more flexibility, cost reduction and finally to determine the benefits of the IT/business relationship compared to the costs.
Thus, for certain activities of the company, the objective may be to simplify the infrastructure for instance reduce its complexity, reduce the need for management, and reduce the workforce, for others, it may be a question of optimizing the resource allocations for example removing the limits of physical resources, simplify deployments, increase the use of hardware and for others still, it may be a question of automating the operation of the IS, with a scalable, autonomous architecture and a more flexible provision of new processes and services.
- Audit the partner
Once the needs are clearly defined, it will be a question of making the right choice of partner.
Surrounding yourself well is essential. First of all, it will therefore be a question of identifying whether the partner you are considering has the right skills. This means carrying out a self-diagnosis in an area that the company does not necessarily master, and studying aspects such as workstation maintenance, server administration, or even local networks.
Some suppliers have specific expert skills, if your company lacks these, it is in your interest to choose a service provider namely Atarix who can bring this stone to your building.
Another important point— check that the philosophy of your future service provider is in line with the values of your company. Common values, working methods, and ethics greatly improve partnership relations and the amount of work accomplished during a collaboration.
- Properly define the target architecture
It is important to clearly define the target architecture, because this architecture must be able to grow and evolve afterward, rather than being modified.
Here are the 4 steps to achieve this.
- i) Interview of the leader
You have to first understand the business model of the company and decipher the impacts on its IT infrastructure.
The first series of questions, therefore, concerns how to access your market or go-to-market: online sales via the web, distribution via physical stores, hybrid model, etc.
It is also important to know the ambitions of the company in terms of international sales.
- ii) Needs analysis
You then go into the detail of the business and the needs in terms of digital itself.
The description of the business model of the company must make it possible to anticipate the means and IT tools necessary for the marketing and development of its offer, including the means and application tools.
Depending on usage, the technical definition of your environment including security, network segmentation, etc. and the specifications required for your applications are likely to change.
iii) Reformulation of the need and proposal of several architectures
Once the general need has been formulated and the business needs to be specified, it is necessary to translate the expression of this need into technical language.
During this exchange, you also get an insight into the projected mission deadlines and costs, in order to ensure once again that the architecture meets not only your needs but also your constraints.
- iv) Final architectural offer and estimate
This final architecture is the subject of a precise costing, as well as a summary describing the implementation steps, their time, and their cost.
This final offer allows you to definitively validate the implementation project of your target architecture.
- Implementation of the infrastructure
After the stage of defining the needs and finding the service provider, finally comes the effective implementation of the Cloud infrastructure.
The service provider then interconnects the company’s information system with the hosting platform and integrates the customer’s data and applications. Once the acceptance phase has been carried out, that is to say, the test phase which makes it possible to verify that the infrastructure meets the needs, production begins.
An important point is then to pay particular attention to monitoring the adoption of the new infrastructure, by offering users not only a training phase but above all, an assistance phase until everyone is familiar with the new processes. Insofar as it impacts the end user, it is sometimes transparent for him
To promote the adoption of the project by employees, do not hesitate to precede this phase with a specific communication plan informing of the objectives, future changes, and the different phases of the implementation of the project.
Essential techniques for a successful implementation
A good mastery of the following points guarantees that you will set up your cloud infrastructure in the best conditions. This is why they are the subject of our full attention when you use any services.
- A successful CPU, RAM, and Disk sizing
- Adapted network and internet access
- Robust Security
- A 3 – 2 – 1 backup architecture
- A supervised architecture
- Technical architecture document
Conclusion
Thus, the proper implementation of a Cloud Computing infrastructure within a company revolves around these different stages which are the definition of needs, the selection of the appropriate partner, and the implementation of the new infrastructure itself.
For each step, compliance with certain rules, in particular, the precise definition of needs, implementation of support, and post-project user monitoring will have a decisive impact on the success of the project and on the return that can be expected, both in terms of cost reduction, efficiency and performance.