July 22, 2015 at 17:11How Cloud Transition Changes the Role of Internal IT Services
The beginning of cooperation with the IaaS provider is a serious step for any company towards optimizing costs and new opportunities for business growth.
At the same time, one should not forget about how the use of new tools will affect the already existing business processes and the work of the company's own IT specialists. / Photo Tim Regan CC It is difficult to imagine a medium and large business operating without any IT systems. Of course, he cannot do without IT specialists: from the system administrator to the director of technology. The classic perception of the work of these people is that they make everything work for us: they buy equipment, they set everything up and solve everyday problems.
Few people think that information technology is a full-fledged part of the business, which (like any other area) lends itself to planning and is even very suitable for this. Managers often miss this moment when they think about the work of the internal IT service, therefore, as such, development due to proper planning does not occur.
Virtual infrastructure is a great tool for quickly and flexibly scaling IT systems, translating experimental designs and saving money in general. With a competent approach, it allows the company to invest time in the root tasks of the business and think about how to develop it from a strategic point of view.
This is often what IT specialists working on the staff of the most ordinary company lack from a digital agency to a bank. One of the reasons for the change of employer in such a situation is the overabundance of "dirty work" in the constant maintenance of jobs, the restructuring of servers and the laying of communications in the office. You can’t get away from this work, but few people argue that all this doesn’t look so attractive for a modern IT specialist.
Working with IaaS allows you to give most of the service tasks to the outside. Thus, employees can already do something more interesting and think about how to develop your business and choose the right tools, and not just “patch holes” when something breaks in the office.
Another opinion of PickPoint, which is an active user of IaaS:
As a result, there are a number of advantages:
In addition, it is worth noting the general maturity of the IaaS-providers market. Today, there is no longer a situation where one provider provides only part of the services, and everything else needs to be picked up somewhere else. The main thing is that the provider has accumulated expertise and resources to maintain a high level of knowledge on working with equipment and software solutions.
In order to still make the “move to the cloud” without unnecessary labor, it is worth considering the introduction of ITIL + ITSM standards, clarify the SLA at the provider level and compliance with Tier standards. The choice of a service provider depends on the business model of the customer’s company itself - for the corresponding tasks it is necessary to use the right model of cloud solutions: SaaS, IaaS, PaaS. The simplest solution is to look at those companies that are already collaborating with a particular provider and compare their business model with their own.
At the same time, one should not forget about how the use of new tools will affect the already existing business processes and the work of the company's own IT specialists. / Photo Tim Regan CC It is difficult to imagine a medium and large business operating without any IT systems. Of course, he cannot do without IT specialists: from the system administrator to the director of technology. The classic perception of the work of these people is that they make everything work for us: they buy equipment, they set everything up and solve everyday problems.
Few people think that information technology is a full-fledged part of the business, which (like any other area) lends itself to planning and is even very suitable for this. Managers often miss this moment when they think about the work of the internal IT service, therefore, as such, development due to proper planning does not occur.
Virtual infrastructure is a great tool for quickly and flexibly scaling IT systems, translating experimental designs and saving money in general. With a competent approach, it allows the company to invest time in the root tasks of the business and think about how to develop it from a strategic point of view.
This is often what IT specialists working on the staff of the most ordinary company lack from a digital agency to a bank. One of the reasons for the change of employer in such a situation is the overabundance of "dirty work" in the constant maintenance of jobs, the restructuring of servers and the laying of communications in the office. You can’t get away from this work, but few people argue that all this doesn’t look so attractive for a modern IT specialist.
Working with IaaS allows you to give most of the service tasks to the outside. Thus, employees can already do something more interesting and think about how to develop your business and choose the right tools, and not just “patch holes” when something breaks in the office.
Prototypes of future versions and running in new functions often require separate stands of similar performance, and with a shudder we recall self-assembled “servers” and nightly engraftment work.
Progress here, of course, is relaxing: clicked with the mouse and got the whole farm under the test. In this case, you do not need to go to the management for the budget for test hardware, and later to think about where to put the obsolete decommissioned equipment. Beauty.
- Hotels.ru project team on working with IaaS cloud
Another opinion of PickPoint, which is an active user of IaaS:
When it all started, server hardware was borrowed to save money. But we quickly ran into the ceiling of its capabilities, and the increase in load was difficult to predict due to the novelty of the idea on the domestic market.
Having become entranced with a constant upgrade of iron, we decided not to overflow from empty to empty and turned to cloud technologies.
As a result, there are a number of advantages:
- revision of business processes in the direction of accelerating development and increasing efficiency;
- less approvals for the purchase of own equipment and enterprise solutions;
- lack of capital costs for the purchase of equipment;
- lack of labor for deployment and configuration;
- instant access to any storage volumes;
- no need to account for depreciation.
In addition, it is worth noting the general maturity of the IaaS-providers market. Today, there is no longer a situation where one provider provides only part of the services, and everything else needs to be picked up somewhere else. The main thing is that the provider has accumulated expertise and resources to maintain a high level of knowledge on working with equipment and software solutions.
In order to still make the “move to the cloud” without unnecessary labor, it is worth considering the introduction of ITIL + ITSM standards, clarify the SLA at the provider level and compliance with Tier standards. The choice of a service provider depends on the business model of the customer’s company itself - for the corresponding tasks it is necessary to use the right model of cloud solutions: SaaS, IaaS, PaaS. The simplest solution is to look at those companies that are already collaborating with a particular provider and compare their business model with their own.