Maximizing Profits in the Cloud

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1 Maximizing Profits in the Cloud Maximizing Profits in the Cloud A Playbook for MSPs Migrating Customers to AWS 1

2 Contents Overview Enterprise Challenges MSP Challenges A Playbook for Success 1 - Discover 2 - Size 3 - Migrate 4 - Monitor 5 - Optimize Summary Additional Resources To learn more visit idera.com today! 2

3 Overview It is no secret that the cloud is here to stay. Gartner estimates that by 2015, end-user spending on cloud services could exceed $180 billion. Companies, or employees within those firms, have started exploring this new utility model and are either thinking about moving to the cloud, are in process, or are already there. However, 2014 is going to be a unique year. Cisco s Global Cloud Index found that this will be the first year that the majority of workloads will be on the cloud (51%) versus 49% in the traditional IT space. This tipping point is significant as we are moving beyond the early adopters and into the mainstream. The challenge is that firms across the world don t have the expertise to make the transition a smooth one. And while 2014 is just the beginning, the next five years are going to be just as exciting. Piper Jaffrey 2013 CIO survey found that throughout the next five years, a 44% annual growth in workloads for the public cloud is expected versus an 8.9% growth for on-premise. In other words, if you aren t developing your cloud strategy, you should be working on your going-out-of-business strategy. 3

4 Enterprise Challenges One of the biggest challenges for enterprises making the move to the cloud is the unknown. Uncertainty creates inertia and a lack of confidence. How should instances be sized when migrating applications to the cloud? What steps are required to actually deploy to the cloud? How will performance and availability be measured and monitored? Will the shift save money or ultimately cost more? How do you make sure the deployment is right-sized over time? What are techniques to drive costs out of the system? Of course, these are just a few of the critical questions that will come up. These questions and often objections create opportunity for Managed Services Providers (MSP s). Enterprises are looking for a solution to getting to the cloud and by pulling together the right process, tools, and service there is great opportunity to expand market share and profits. MSP Challenges More and more MSP s are enhancing their offerings around cloud migrations and management. In parallel, customer expectations are increasing they are getting smarter about what questions to ask, expect more from a service level perspective and now expect holistic management whether servers are in the closet or the cloud. To remain competitive, MSP s must find ways to differentiate with their services, speed, and cost. Finding ways to accelerate migrations is one of the first steps. In the process, demonstrating to clients that the cloud utility model isn t a black box and provides performance and cost improvements builds confidence. As customer, application, and server counts grow, MSP s need effective tools to manage everything regardless of where these apps and servers are located. Last, they need to address the ongoing demands of customers by demonstrating value every day. That may mean giving the customer visibility to the performance of the application as well as showing that the system is constantly being right-sized to ensure they maximize their cloud investment. 4

5 A Playbook for Success The complexity of migrating applications to the cloud can vary greatly. The following playbook focuses specifically on the process of assessing the infrastructure, mapping to the appropriate cloud instances, ensuring effective ongoing monitoring and ultimately keeping the new deployment right-sized to minimize cost and maximize performance. Discover Size Migrate Monitor Optimize Discover. The first step in the process is to discover the systems currently in use. The fastest path is to leverage an existing configuration management and orchestration solution. IDERA s Uptime Cloud Monitor provides a number of cookbooks that tie into solutions like Chef and Puppet. Deploying Uptime Cloud Monitor collectors across all existing servers will enable the capture of data necessary to complete the sizing assessment. Size. With the Uptime Cloud Monitor collectors installed, you can leverage the Cloud Sizing Tool to automatically generate a report indicating which Amazon Web Services (AWS) instance configurations best match the existing application environment. This tool analyses the actual usage of the application workload and leverages proprietary algorithms to predict which (and how many) AWS instance types are required. Migrate. This step is often a process in and of itself. Most firms today offer complete migration services from simple lift and shift to full blown rearchitecting of applications to take full advantage of next generation cloud architectures. Amazon publishes a number of resources and has created a recommended process for migrating applications. One good place to start is the Migrating your Existing Applications to The Cloud Whitepaper. Monitor.With the applications migrated to the cloud, the next step is to setup the appropriate monitors, alerts, and dashboards to ensure everything is performing to expectations. While Uptime Cloud Monitor provides deep visibility into servers, sites, and applications you can also create personalized readonly views for your individual customers. This way, they can always check the health of their deployment. In addition, you can take advantage of Uptime Cloud Monitor s hybrid performance monitoring to continue to run both workloads in parallel, and prepare the new Cloud infrastructure for production readiness. 5

6 5. Optimize. The process doesn t stop once customers are up and running in the cloud. As demands increase on applications, as Amazon enhances their offerings, and as environments evolve, it is critical to right-size deployments. Uptime Cloud Monitor makes this process seamless. At any point, sizing reports can be generated on the cloud infrastructure to validate the right instance types are in use and the cost delta between on demand and reserved instances. With that information in hand deployments can be right-sized and the changes easily communicated back to the customer. We use our own optimization techniques at IDERA and recently found a cost savings of more than $1 million that can be saved during 2014 by using the Cloud Sizing Tool to righ- size our AWS environment versus co-location. Summary Now is the time to enhance your cloud offerings. By implementing the playbook above, customers can get to the cloud more quickly, have confidence in their deployment, and in the process MSPs can increase their profits. To get started, we encourage you to try Uptime Cloud Monitor. It is free for 14 days and installs in minutes. Once you get comfortable with the capabilities, let s talk about how to best setup your deployment to bring on clients and expose the right information at the right time. 6