July 29, 2024
Minimizing Turbulence in the Modern Cloud
Cloud computing has become a foundational pillar of IT infrastructure, and organizations must keep up with evolutions in the space to take advantage of emerging benefits.
Not long ago, moving to the cloud was a decision that most business and IT leaders made solely based on business demands related to cost or agility. But over the past several years, the cloud has become integral to business operations for many organizations, creating a pressing need to optimize cloud environments for simplicity, security, performance, cost and improved client experiences. Leaders have grown tired of talking about their “cloud journeys” and instead want actionable advice about how to increase the speed and quality of their cloud deployments. Automation is a key component of cloud optimization, with automated management and security tools helping to free up capacity for overburdened IT staff and ensuring that ever-growing cloud environments continue to help organizations make progress toward their most important business goals. Cloud-native apps and data have also made significant headway as cloud-native processes align neatly with initiatives such as DevOps and now platform engineering, as well as with important outcomes such as flexibility and observability. Cloud services from a trusted partner such as CDW can accelerate time to value, reduce complexity and ensure that cloud environments are as secure and cost-effective as possible so leaders can focus on what matters most: the business.
Learn how CDW can help optimize your cloud operations.
Not long ago, moving to the cloud was a decision that most business and IT leaders made solely based on business demands related to cost or agility. But over the past several years, the cloud has become integral to business operations for many organizations, creating a pressing need to optimize cloud environments for simplicity, security, performance, cost and improved client experiences. Leaders have grown tired of talking about their “cloud journeys” and instead want actionable advice about how to increase the speed and quality of their cloud deployments. Automation is a key component of cloud optimization, with automated management and security tools helping to free up capacity for overburdened IT staff and ensuring that ever-growing cloud environments continue to help organizations make progress toward their most important business goals. Cloud-native apps and data have also made significant headway as cloud-native processes align neatly with initiatives such as DevOps and now platform engineering, as well as with important outcomes such as flexibility and observability. Cloud services from a trusted partner such as CDW can accelerate time to value, reduce complexity and ensure that cloud environments are as secure and cost-effective as possible so leaders can focus on what matters most: the business.
Learn how CDW can help
optimize your cloud operations.
It’s no exaggeration to say that most organizations simply could not have overcome the challenges of the past few years without the availability of cloud computing.
When the public cloud first emerged as a legitimate option about a decade and a half ago, many IT and business leaders were understandably skittish about the prospect of moving their business-critical workloads and sensitive data out of their corporate data centers. Then, as companies began to see success with the cloud model, many organizations adopted “cloud first” strategies, sometimes migrating resources to the public cloud without first assessing workloads to determine which environment fit best. When this approach inevitably resulted in cost overruns and excessive sprawl, the prevailing strategy pivoted to “cloud smart,” an approach meant to help organizations modernize, retire, replace or relocate their applications in a phased, deliberate manner by leveraging the computing environment best suited to each workload. Today, many of the collaboration suites and productivity apps that workers take for granted as part of daily office life are delivered by vendors via the public cloud, even as IT and business leaders continue to fine-tune their own internal cloud strategies.
In short, the cloud has fueled much of the digital transformation of the past several years, and it will certainly continue to do so in the future. But looking ahead, organizations need to continue to adapt their cloud strategies and environments to meet evolving needs and tackle growing challenges. Chief among these is the continued exponential growth of data, which is forcing business and IT leaders to grapple with storage capacity, cost management, security and compliance considerations, processing at scale, and the need to ensure data quality. Another critical challenge is preparing for the rise of artificial intelligence and machine learning applications, which are quickly making the shift from a novel, niche technology to a set of business-critical solutions. As AI continues to make inroads, organizations must ensure that their cloud models provide both the computational power and data accessibility needed to achieve valuable business insights. At the same time, organizations must work to evaluate and modernize their existing legacy applications, a process that often requires them to embrace cloud-native technologies such as containerization and serverless computing, which can provide improved scalability and flexibility.
54%
The percentage of organizations that cite understanding app dependencies as a challenge in migrating workloads to the public cloud; 46% say that assessing the cost of different environments is a challenge, and 39% say it is a challenge to optimize costs post-migration
Source: Flexera, “2024 State of the Cloud Report,” March 2024
By proactively addressing these emerging challenges and taking a forward-thinking approach to their environments, organizations can position themselves to harness the full potential of the cloud while maintaining critical control over costs, visibility, sprawl and security.
It’s no exaggeration to say that most organizations simply could not have overcome the challenges of the past few years without the availability of cloud computing.
When the public cloud first emerged as a legitimate option about a decade and a half ago, many IT and business leaders were understandably skittish about the prospect of moving their business-critical workloads and sensitive data out of their corporate data centers. Then, as companies began to see success with the cloud model, many organizations adopted “cloud first” strategies, sometimes migrating resources to the public cloud without first assessing workloads to determine which environment fit best. When this approach inevitably resulted in cost overruns and excessive sprawl, the prevailing strategy pivoted to “cloud smart,” an approach meant to help organizations modernize, retire, replace or relocate their applications in a phased, deliberate manner by leveraging the computing environment best suited to each workload. Today, many of the collaboration suites and productivity apps that workers take for granted as part of daily office life are delivered by vendors via the public cloud, even as IT and business leaders continue to fine-tune their own internal cloud strategies.
In short, the cloud has fueled much of the digital transformation of the past several years, and it will certainly continue to do so in the future. But looking ahead, organizations need to continue to adapt their cloud strategies and environments to meet evolving needs and tackle growing challenges. Chief among these is the continued exponential growth of data, which is forcing business and IT leaders to grapple with storage capacity, cost management, security and compliance considerations, processing at scale, and the need to ensure data quality. Another critical challenge is preparing for the rise of artificial intelligence and machine learning applications, which are quickly making the shift from a novel, niche technology to a set of business-critical solutions. As AI continues to make inroads, organizations must ensure that their cloud models provide both the computational power and data accessibility needed to achieve valuable business insights. At the same time, organizations must work to evaluate and modernize their existing legacy applications, a process that often requires them to embrace cloud-native technologies such as containerization and serverless computing, which can provide improved scalability and flexibility.
By proactively addressing these emerging challenges and taking a forward-thinking approach to their environments, organizations can position themselves to harness the full potential of the cloud while maintaining critical control over costs, visibility, sprawl and security.
54%
The percentage of organizations that cite understanding app dependencies as a challenge in migrating workloads to the public cloud; 46% say that assessing the cost of different environments is a challenge, and 39% say it is a challenge to optimize costs post-migration
Source: Flexera, “2024 State of the Cloud Report,” March 2024
Multicloud: Choice and Complexity
Most organizations have embraced a multicloud model that incorporates resources from multiple public cloud vendors and often on-premises private clouds, as well. A multicloud model allows organizations to place resources in the environments they think will provide the best fit, but this can also add new management and cost challenges.
89%
The percentage of organizations that use a multicloud model, including 73% using a hybrid model incorporating private and public cloud resources; only 10% of organizations use only a single public cloud, and just 1% use only a single private cloud.
Source: Flexera, “2024 State of the Cloud Report,” March 2024
57%
The percentage of organizations that have their apps siloed on different clouds; 49% have disaster recovery/failover between clouds, 45% have data integration between clouds and 40% have workload mobility between clouds.
Source: Flexera, “2024 State of the Cloud Report,” March 2024
58%
The percentage of organizations that use multicloud security tools; 49% use multicloud cost optimization tools, and the same number use multicloud management tools.
Source: Flexera, “2024 State of the Cloud Report,” March 2024
Multicloud: Choice and Complexity
Most organizations have embraced a multicloud model that incorporates resources from multiple public cloud vendors and often on-premises private clouds, as well. A multicloud model allows organizations to place resources in the environments they think will provide the best fit, but this can also add new management and cost challenges.
89%
The percentage of organizations that use a multicloud model, including 73% using a hybrid model incorporating private and public cloud resources; only 10% of organizations use only a single public cloud, and just 1% use only a single private cloud.
Source: Flexera, “2024 State of the Cloud Report,” March 2024
57%
The percentage of organizations that have their apps siloed on different clouds; 49% have disaster recovery/failover between clouds, 45% have data integration between clouds and 40% have workload mobility between clouds.
Source: Flexera, “2024 State of the Cloud Report,” March 2024
58%
The percentage of organizations that use multicloud security tools; 49% use multicloud cost optimization tools, and the same number use multicloud management tools.
Source: Flexera, “2024 State of the Cloud Report,” March 2024
- AUTOMATION IS KEY
- THE RISE OF ‘CLOUD NATIVE’
- CDW CLOUD SERVICES
Automation has become a cornerstone feature of effective IT infrastructure (particularly cloud computing), as it has the ability to transform the ways organizations manage, secure and optimize their digital environments. Although many organizations migrate resources to the public cloud in search of simplicity, these cloud environments have grown more complex as they become larger, and automation is necessary to prevent management and maintenance burdens from becoming overwhelming. By leveraging automation to streamline processes, enhance security and ensure ongoing scalability, organizations can keep their cloud environments humming with minimal human intervention. Also, organizations are increasingly using the cloud to support AI-related use cases, such as automated data analytics and automation integration, into all aspects of their operations.
AUTOMATED MANAGEMENT: Cloud automation allows IT administrators to automate what would otherwise be manual processes and accelerate the delivery of infrastructure resources on a self-service basis in response to user demand. Additionally, organizations can leverage cloud automation in the software development lifecycle for functions including code testing, network diagnostics, data security, software-defined networking or version control. Cloud automation tools run on top of virtual environments, and they can be used across both public and private clouds as well as in hybrid and multicloud environments. Increased automation reduces the burden on IT professionals and can also standardize processes and policies across complex IT environments.
SIMPLIFIED SECURITY: Today’s threat landscape has simply become too vast and complex for manual processes alone. Cloud security automation is necessary to monitor production environments for security vulnerabilities, follow predefined remediation steps and in some cases even automatically perform incident response tasks. There are a number of techniques, applications, tools and methodologies that can help automate low-level, repetitive tasks, allowing security teams and infrastructure specialists to focus on higher-priority processes. Automating cloud security also helps teams to close the skills gap that many organizations continue to struggle with, especially smaller organizations with limited cybersecurity budgets and companies in locations that have historically had difficulty attracting top talent.
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CLOSING THE SKILLS GAP: With IT teams already overworked and short-staffed, any means of reducing complexity offers great value and can become an essential part of an organization’s cloud strategy. Automation can eliminate some of the manual tasks and roles that are part of more traditional environments. Organizations can also leverage automation to identify emerging skills needs and more quickly and effectively address them. And when the situation calls for hiring, newer and younger employees are likely to expect a certain level of automation on the job, making it an attractive tool for recruiting.
IOT MANAGEMENT IN THE CLOUD: The Internet of Things is central to automating operations in a number of industries, and IoT cloud management can help organizations to register, organize, monitor and remotely manage their IoT devices at scale. Remote monitoring in the cloud lets administrators see their equipment’s metadata, set policy changes and receive real-time service alerts. Administrators leveraging cloud IoT management can also perform bulk updates (such as firmware and bug fixes), and they can create logical groups of devices (such as all sensors in a specific area) to help them to better organize and target their fleets for simplified management.
AI AND ML FOR DATA ANALYTICS: With artificial intelligence applications rising rapidly over the past two years, many organizations are architecting their cloud data in ways that allow them to feed it into AI-driven analytics tools. This allows them to analyze large data sets, simplify and scale trends, and uncover insights for data analysts. While cost is not always the driving factor for going to the cloud, it can often be the most cost-effective solution for data analytics. This is especially true for organizations that have either dynamic or variable demand for data analytics infrastructure, as the cloud offers a consumption-based model in which companies are only charged for what they use.
As organizations work to modernize their legacy environments, many are turning to “cloud native” solutions, a term used to describe both apps and data that are designed from the start to be run in a cloud environment. This approach helps organizations avoid the inefficiencies that occur when legacy workloads are migrated in a like-for-like manner from on-premises environments. It also ensures that applications and data can move seamlessly from one cloud to another, if desired. Cloud-native tools and practices include microservices architecture, containerization and serverless data processing, and they can help organizations attain a number of important benefits.
FLEXIBILITY AND AGILITY: Containerization and microservices let IT teams develop, test and deploy applications in a modular fashion, with teams breaking applications down into smaller, loosely coupled services. This approach gives developers the ability to work on different parts of an application simultaneously without affecting other components — which, in turn, allows them to iterate quickly, implement changes as needed and seamlessly scale components according to demand. In many ways, cloud-native development is the logical result of the widespread movement away from so-called waterfall development practices to more agile workflows. Cloud-native practices reduce time to market for new apps and changes and ensure applications are able to run consistently across different environments.
OBSERVABILITY AND VISIBILITY: Effective management of cloud-native environments relies on robust observability and visibility, which organizations need to maintain the health, performance and security of their applications. Legacy approaches to observability have largely centered on monitoring specific applications and infrastructure components and have struggled to manage the multitude of tools in use. Such an approach is no longer adequate to help organizations scale what some have called the “IT complexity wall.” A more modern approach to observability will use AI and automation to discover and monitor all microservices across an organization’s cloud environments, allowing IT teams to identify issues before users are affected and eliminating manual tasks. This increased observability also allows for more comprehensive monitoring that can deliver holistic insights about an organization’s cloud environment.
RESILIENCE AND SECURITY: Security in cloud-native environments is integrated at every layer, from infrastructure to applications. For instance, microservices architecture enhances resilience by isolating failures to individual components, preventing systemwide outages and minimizing the impact of any single point of failure. Automated security tools continuously monitor application and data environments, scanning for vulnerabilities and enforcing security policies, providing real-time threat detection and response, and addressing potential security issues before they result in negative consequences. Compliance and data protection are also critical pieces of the cloud-native security puzzle. Tools that provide encryption for data at rest and in transit, along with automated compliance monitoring, help organizations meet regulatory requirements and protect sensitive information.
DEVOPS INTEGRATION: One of the driving forces behind the rapid adoption of cloud-native technologies and practices is the desire to support DevOps and DevSecOps workflows. In a DevOps or DevSecOps environment, collaboration and communication between teams is heavily emphasized, with the goal of increasing both the speed and quality of software releases. Cloud-native practices naturally support DevOps environments because they prioritize agility, scalability and continuous improvement. More specifically, both approaches rely on continuous integration and continuous deployment pipelines that allow automated testing and deployment, as well as on Infrastructure as Code methods that ensure consistency and repeatability across environments.
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The State of Cloud Security
Even as the cloud sees nearly universal adoption, IT and business leaders remain highly concerned about securing their cloud environments.
59%
The percentage of respondents who see security and compliance concerns as a primary barrier to cloud adoption in their organizations, outpacing hurdles such as technical challenges (52%), resource constraints (49%), and organizational and operational factors (49%)
Source: Fortinet, “2024 Cloud Security Report,” April 2024
44%
The percentage of IT leaders who say the public cloud is either “somewhat” or “significantly” riskier than on-premises environments; only 30% say the cloud carries less risk than on-premises infrastructure
Source: Fortinet, “2024 Cloud Security Report,” April 2024
58%
The percentage of respondents who cite data security and privacy as a primary challenge in maintaining day-to-day cloud security operations, more than any other factor; half or more also cite configuration management (55%), access control and identity management (54%), and threat detection and response (50%) as main challenges
Source: Fortinet, “2024 Cloud Security Report,” April 2024
93%
The percentage of respondents who say they are “moderately” or “extremely” concerned about the industrywide skills shortage of qualified cybersecurity professionals; most (74%) say they are experiencing a shortage in cybersecurity talent within their own organizations
Source: Fortinet, “2024 Cloud Security Report,” April 2024
When done right, cloud computing can bring simplicity to IT operations by removing the management and maintenance burdens associated with on-premises infrastructure. However, the process of architecting a cloud environment and migrating resources can be quite complex, and many organizations turn to a trusted partner such as CDW for help. By working with CDW’s experts from the start of their cloud initiatives, organizations can sidestep hurdles such as sprawl and cost overruns that commonly plague cloud environments and can ensure they are efficiently deploying public cloud resources in a way that will help them to meet business goals.
Assessment: If the foundation of a cloud environment is weak, anything built on top of it is going to be ineffective. Too often, organizations perform wholesale, one-to-one migrations, essentially replicating their on-premises environments in the public cloud. This results in a failure to take advantage of the unique benefits offered by the cloud, and it can be prevented by a thorough assessment and rationalization of existing workloads and resources. Such assessments can better position organizations to solve their present-day business problems.
Consulting: Once a solid foundation is in place, organizations often turn to CDW’s consulting and advisory services to optimize their cloud environments to achieve specific outcomes. If these environments were not properly architected, CDW’s consultants can help identify inefficiencies and design solutions to get organizations back on track. They can also help ensure that cloud environments are set up to support emerging use cases such as AI applications. One common area for improvement is cost optimization. Too often, IT and business leaders do not address these issues until it becomes obvious that they are on track to overspend their annual consumption commitments. In some cases, CDW’s solution architects have helped organizations achieve tens of thousands of dollars in monthly savings by making just a few simple tweaks to their environments. Many organizations are overcoming this issue by leveraging microservices and cloud-native solutions where they make sense.
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Management: There is no such thing as a set-it-and-forget-it cloud environment. In a CDW Cloud-Managed Services engagement, organizations can offload some or all of their critical cloud management tasks, freeing up internal staffers for strategic projects that drive innovation and business value. CDW’s many years of cross-industry cloud experience allow experts to spot challenges and opportunities that internal staffers may miss, which helps fix problems before they have a negative impact on end users. Additionally, CDW provides continuous monitoring and maintenance, ensuring that cloud environments operate at peak efficiency and reducing the risk of both downtime and unnecessary sprawl.
Cloud Lifecycle Services: Finally, CDW’s Cloud Lifecycle Services provide end-to-end design, management, optimization, and retirement of resources and environments. With specialized skills backed by over two decades of experience, CDW’s industry-certified professionals provide unmatched speed and support. CDW is one of very few organizations with relationships and expertise across all three major public cloud vendors, making CDW Cloud Lifecycle Services a natural fit for organizations with large multicloud investments. In these in-depth, long-term engagements, organizations receive help with cloud migrations, talent orchestration, managed services, professional services, managed application services and elastic engineering services. Additionally, CDW’s 24/7 Solutions Center is available to help organizations solve problems in real time, ensuring seamless cloud operations.
