How do you plan for your business growth when your hardware and supportive environment cannot expand to fit your growing needs? 2020 provided many reasons to move towards a scalable cloud platform besides organic growth of your business. Let’s examine some “whys” to consider scalable growth and how cloud migration can help plan for inevitable business growth.
Many organizations are straddling the fence between their cloud environments and on-premise environments. They have some resources in the cloud, some as Saas, and some applications still on-premise. These on-premise applications and systems usually become the production bottleneck. Why have these systems been left on-premise to age like fine wine? Answers vary, but perhaps you share an all too common situation:
- The legacy systems are too disruptive for the business to move.
- In-house resources lack critical knowledge on how to build and manage the new environment.
- Your organization is still looking at CAPEX instead of OPEX for your hardware funding.
- Your environment is so constant there is not a clear need to have scalability at your fingertips.
- Analysis paralysis! Cloud offerings have too many moving parts to clearly understand what to buy and how much it will cost.
- The remaining on-premise applications have tumbled down the priority list, like a friend in the basement looking for his stapler.
Not all transitions to the cloud are straightforward, but if you already have transitioned some systems to the cloud, you have had a taste of that process.
*PRO TIP: Legacy systems can feel like a dark hole of despair. If you don’t mess with it, indeed, it will keep running forever, right? Copy your environment to the cloud in a separate instance, isolated from all other environments. This step will help you scope how difficult a migration will be without upsetting any business processes and indicate what steps you will need to engage outside help.
Does your on-premise system need scalability? Arguably the answer is always YES, but sometimes those reasons lurk on the edge of consideration. There are too many scenarios to consider in one article, so we will evaluate one of the most recent (and still on-going) reasons every system in your business needs scalable cloud resources.
Last year many organizations were caught off guard with an immediate interruption to brick and mortar commerce. Due to the Covid-19 global pandemic, business systems red-lined with e-commerce activities. Up to that point, many organizations hosted their e-commerce platforms in their on-premise data center fully integrated with all supporting business systems. With most organizations sizing their e-commerce platforms to handle some seasonal flux, many never considered the supportive systems behind e-commerce. How would these systems scale and perform given a sustained increase of transactions through the entire eco-system?
WHAT your current landscape might resemble:
Organizations woke up in March 2020 to their e-commerce engine able to scale and take orders, phew. The technology group quickly realized the supporting on-premise inventory systems could not scale, causing transaction drops, flooded queues, and business systems screaming to a halt. Now, you have a messy inventory nightmare, a business that cannot perform routine tasks, and a global pandemic standing in the way of ordering more hardware without a quick timeline for turning more resources live.
WHAT IF the above scenario featured resources already in the cloud? Perhaps it would go something like this:
Organizations woke up in March 2020 to their e-commerce engine able to scale and take orders, phew. The technology group quickly realized the supporting cloud-hosted inventory systems did not have the resources necessary to keep up with the increase in e-commerce traffic. A few clicks of a mouse increased network bandwidth, server memory, and disk space, preventing transaction drops, flooded queues, and business systems screaming to a halt. You have now avoided a messy inventory nightmare, ensured your business could perform routine tasks and delivered a sustainable solution to support the increase in digital traffic in record time.
There is no better feeling than saying “yes, we can do that” to the business and know you don’t have the struggle to find resources to fill the computing gaps. Is scalable growth on your technology roadmap this year? If it isn’t, perhaps it should be added. We realize you might not face digital pressure from a pandemic every year, but no doubt your business is growing, and with growth comes the need to scale. Call us; we thrive on helping our customers scale to their greatest potential.