Cloud services open up opportunities for many companies in the form of increased flexibility, efficiency, security and competitiveness. Without a good cloud strategy and plan, however, it is easy to get lost and find yourself stuck in a cloud solution that is not adapted to the needs of the business.
In this guide, we go over several factors that are critical to creating a long-term sustainable plan and cloud strategy. We also highlight common pitfalls that should be avoided to ensure that your life in the cloud is as smooth and cost-effective as possible.
Your cloud strategy needs to be dynamic
Whether your organization has had cloud-based IT solutions for years, or you are in the early stages of migrating to the cloud, your cloud strategy should be dynamic. Although migration to the cloud should be seen as a long-term strategy to create long-term value for your organization, the strategy should be designed so that you can quickly take advantage of new opportunities.
Make it a routine to review your presence in the cloud and your strategy approximately twice a year. Then you ensure that you have a dynamic cloud strategy that constantly helps you develop.
Having a static cloud strategy can involve risks such as losing competitiveness in the market, being locked in with ineffective solutions and increased costs.
The right requirements: choose a cloud partner with expertise for your specific business
- Everything as a Service
Ensure that functions that you are expected to use often or a lot in the cloud are also directly in the cloud platform, i.e. that they are offered in an "as a service" model. -
Several availability zones/regions
Make sure the supplier has several availability zones. It enables the spread of your applications across several data centers, in order to achieve application redundancy. - Redundancy in all layers
The cloud provider must ensure that all services are built with redundancy principles in all layers (e.g. network, storage and compute). Then it is important that you as a customer build redundancy in your own application, taking into account application logic and business requirements. - Security
Your data in the cloud must of course be secure. Your data storage must also be able to be security classified at different levels, for example whether it should be accessible from the internet or not. - Container solution
Make sure that the cloud platform offers a good development environment in the form of a managed container solution, for example Kubernetes. - Disaster recovery
The cloud provider needs to have a documented plan for disaster recovery. Disaster recovery is primarily about planning and having a solution for what to do in case something should happen.
Take control of costs once you're in the cloud
In order for the development of your cloud strategy and presence in the cloud not to turn into an increasing spiral of costs, it is important that you have control over your costs — both current costs and those resulting from your planned development and growth.
To be able to evaluate different solutions in a good way, but also to ensure ROI on your investment, you therefore need to demand a completely transparent price model and well-adapted packaging.
Use our price calculator to estimate your cost in a Swedish cloud service
