How to successfully deliver public cloud workloads

Eventually making the switch to public or hybrid is less about the right provider, and more about effective cloud deployment, says Centurylink.

According to the communications company, in order to manage the total cost of cloud ownership (TCCO), organisations need to switch up the main focus.

Stuart Mills, regional sales director for CenturyLink ANZ, says to gain the best value from a cloud deployment, it must be able to scale – and not just within internal IT or DevOps.

"As each of these groups have differing uses for cloud, the selected cloud partner must deliver powerful capabilities, supporting policies and governance, automation, and advanced features to manage consumption and performance," says Mills.

"The ideal is IT-as-a-Service (ITaaS): a single platform that delivers cloud infrastructure, platform services, integration, and governance all in one. Businesses need to choose their cloud provider carefully to get the ITaaS benefits they need.

CenturyLink claims that organisations can use the cloud provider's own tools to manage their public cloud, including managing access, configurations, change policies and profiles.

Furthermore, CenturyLink says that organisations can work with a cloud services broker to set up roles and policies, and enforce those using a policy engine.

Setting guidelines regarding service level agreements (SLAs) with cloud providers is also critical for good cloud management, says CenturyLink.

"It is therefore essential to partner with a cloud service provider with industry-leading SLAs that will support business-critical applications running in a single cloud zone," adds Mills.

CenturyLink also advises organisations that some SLAs may apply to Software-as-a-Service, Platform-as-a-Service, and Infrastructure-as-a-Service.

"When it comes to SLAs, businesses must consider what metrics they'll use to measure performance objectives, how they'll deal with security breaches or service outages, and, crucially, how to get out of the relationship if the cloud provider isn't delivering," says Mills.

"Getting the best possible cloud performance doesn't stop there. It's also important for organisations to conduct regular assessments and audits to make sure the cloud provider is meeting the agreed standards and the cloud is delivering on expectations.