Category: Public Cloud

As enterprise businesses increasingly consider migrating to public cloud solutions, conducting a thorough cost-benefit analysis (CBA) becomes essential. This analysis helps IT leaders, finance managers, procurement officers, and cloud strategy teams make informed decisions that align with their organizational goals.

Evaluating the Costs of Public Cloud Migration for Enterprises

When evaluating the costs of migrating to the public cloud, enterprises must consider several factors:

1. Initial Setup Costs:

• Infrastructure Configuration: Setting up the cloud infrastructure involves configuring virtual machines, storage, networking, and security measures. These costs can vary depending on the level of customization and the specific cloud services chosen.
• Licensing and Subscription Fees: Enterprises may need to purchase licenses or subscribe to cloud services, which can add to the initial setup costs.

2. Data Transfer Costs:

• Volume of Data: Moving large volumes of data to the cloud can incur significant charges. The amount of data being transferred directly impacts these costs.
• Transfer Speed: Faster data transfer speeds can lead to higher costs, depending on the cloud service provider’s pricing model.

3. Service Provider Charges:

Different cloud service providers have varying pricing structures for data transfer, which can influence the overall cost. Application Refactoring Costs:

• Redesign and Rewriting: Some applications may need to be redesigned or rewritten to function optimally in a cloud environment. This process, known as refactoring, can be a substantial part of the migration budget.
• Compatibility Testing: Ensuring that applications are compatible with the new cloud environment may require extensive testing and adjustments.

4. Ongoing Operational Costs:

• Cloud Service Fees: After migration, enterprises will face ongoing expenses such as cloud service fees, which can include costs for compute, storage, and networking resources.
• Maintenance and Optimization: Regular maintenance and optimization efforts are necessary to ensure the cloud environment remains efficient and cost-effective.

5. Training and Support Costs:

• Staff Training: Employees will need training to use new cloud technologies effectively. This can involve both initial training sessions and ongoing education.
• Support Services: Ongoing support services will be necessary to maintain operations and address any issues that arise.

6. Potential Downtime:

• Business Impact: There may be potential downtime during the migration process, which could impact business operations. Planning for and mitigating this downtime is crucial to minimizing disruptions.

The Benefits of Public Cloud Migration for Enterprises

The benefits of migrating to the public cloud can be substantial:

1. Scalability:

• Resource Flexibility: Public cloud solutions offer the ability to scale resources up or down based on demand, ensuring optimal performance and cost-efficiency.
• Elasticity: Enterprises can quickly adjust their resource allocation to meet changing business needs without significant delays.

2. Flexibility:

• Wide Range of Services: Enterprises gain access to a wide range of cloud services and tools that can be tailored to specific business needs.
• Customization: Cloud solutions can be customized to fit the unique requirements of different departments and projects.

3. Cost Savings:

• Reduced Capital Expenditures: Migrating to the public cloud can reduce capital expenditures on physical infrastructure, such as servers and data centers.
• Lower Operational Costs: Operational costs can be lower due to the pay-as-you-go pricing model of cloud services, which allows enterprises to pay only for the resources they use.

4. Enhanced Security:

• Advanced Security Features: Public cloud providers offer advanced security features, such as encryption, identity and access management, and threat detection.
• Compliance: Cloud providers often comply with industry standards and regulations, which can enhance data protection and ensure regulatory compliance.

5. Innovation:

• Faster Deployment: The public cloud enables faster deployment of new applications and services, allowing businesses to stay competitive and respond quickly to market changes.
• Access to Cutting-Edge Technologies: Enterprises can leverage the latest technologies, such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, and big data analytics, available through cloud services.

6. Improved Productivity:

• Focus on Innovation: Cloud migration can lead to improved productivity by allowing IT teams to focus more on new projects and development rather than maintaining on-premises infrastructure.
• Collaboration Tools: Cloud solutions often include collaboration tools that enhance teamwork and streamline workflows.

Conducting a Comprehensive Cost-Benefit Analysis

To conduct a comprehensive CBA, enterprises should follow a structured approach:

• Define Goals and Objectives: Clearly outline the goals and objectives of cloud migration. This includes identifying the desired outcomes and how they align with the organization’s strategic goals.
• Collect Detailed Information: Gather data on current IT costs, projected cloud costs, and potential benefits. This involves a thorough assessment of both tangible and intangible factors.
• Compare Costs and Benefits: Analyze the costs and benefits over a defined period, considering both quantitative and qualitative factors. This comparison should include a detailed breakdown of all relevant expenses and anticipated advantages.
• Assess Potential Risks: Evaluate risks associated with migration, such as data security and compliance issues. Identifying and mitigating these risks is crucial to ensure a smooth transition.
• Provide Recommendations: Based on the analysis, recommend whether to proceed with the migration and outline necessary steps. This should include a clear action plan and any contingencies that need to be addressed.

Key Considerations for Enterprises in Their CBA

When conducting a CBA, enterprises should consider several key factors:

• Total Cost of Ownership (TCO): Evaluate both direct and indirect costs associated with the migration and ongoing cloud operations.
• Return on Investment (ROI): Calculate the expected ROI to determine the financial viability of migration. This involves comparing the projected benefits against the total costs.
• Impact on Business Operations: Assess potential disruptions and long-term benefits to business operations. This includes evaluating how migration will affect day-to-day activities and overall business performance.
• Choosing the Right Cloud Service Provider: Select a provider that meets the organization’s needs and offers reliable support. Consider factors such as service level agreements (SLAs), customer support, and the provider’s track record.
• Compliance and Security: Ensure the chosen cloud solution complies with industry regulations and provides robust security measures. This is essential to protect sensitive data and maintain regulatory compliance.

Conclusion: Making Informed Cloud Decisions Through Rigorous CBA

Conducting a thorough cost-benefit analysis is crucial for enterprise businesses considering a migration to public cloud solutions. By carefully evaluating the costs, benefits, and potential risks, IT leaders, finance managers, procurement officers, and cloud strategy teams can make informed decisions that drive innovation and achieve strategic goals.

DevOps and CI/CD are two significant methodologies that have changed software development in modern times. DevOps unites development and operations teams, and software delivery can become rapid and efficient with them. CI/CD, or Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery, tests and releases software via automation to deliver software updates in a reliable and efficient manner to its users.

In this regard, containers have emerged as a breakthrough technology, contributing significantly towards DevOps efficiency. Containers introduce a lightweight, predictable environment for software, simplifying building, testing, and deploying for any platform.

In this blog, we will explore why containers are important in DevOps and how they enrich the CI/CD pipeline. We will show how development is easier with containers and how software delivery can be automated and scaled.

What Are Containers?

1. Definition: Containers are lightweight, movable, and independent packages that combine an application with all it needs to run—like code, libraries, and dependencies. With them, it is easy to run and deploy programs in any environment with no fear of conflicts and discrepancies.
2. Popular Container Technologies: The most common container technology is Docker. Developers can simply build, run, and manage with Docker, providing a consistent environment for all software development phases, including development through production.
3. Key Characteristics:

• Lightweight and Portable: Containers are more lightweight than virtual machines, using less memory and CPU. They can be easily moved between systems, ensuring the application works the same everywhere.
• Isolated Environments for Applications: Containers ensure that a single application runs in its own environment. There is no chance for conflict between two programs, nor any dependency between two programs in one system. There is a full environment for each one in a container, and no “works on my machine” problem arises.

1. Why Containers Matter in DevOps:
   Containers are a DevOps breakthrough in that they address two significant issues:

• Environment Inconsistency: Containers guarantee an application will run in a consistent manner in any environment, including development, testing, and production.
• Dependency Management: By including all dependencies in the container, one doesn’t have to concern oneself with having a variety of library and tool versions in environments, and therefore, the whole process is easier and reliable.

Overview of DevOps and CI/CD

This section introduces DevOps and CI/CD and describes how containers form a key part of supporting these approaches. It describes DevOps, CI/CD, and how workflows and software delivery efficiency can be enhanced through containers.

1. What is DevOps?

• DevOps is a shared culture between operations and development groups.
• Its primary objective is to make operations more efficient and deliver software in a shorter timeframe through shattering silos and increased collaboration between departments.

1. What is a CI/CD Pipeline?

• Continuous Integration (CI): The process re-factors the code, incorporates it with base code, and tests for any new code impact on existing features.
• Continuous Deployment (CD): It automatically and consistently releases software, delivering quick and dependable updates to production.

1. How Containers Fit In:

• Containers align with DevOps and CI/CD aims through providing consistent environments for testing and deploying.
• They package an application, and its dependencies together and then make them function in any environment consistently.
• Containers enable rapid, consistent, and automated workflows, improving overall efficiency in software delivery.

The Role of Containers in DevOps

Containers are an integral part of DevOps, supporting efficiency, collaboration, and scalability. How development and deploying processes become easier and more reliable through them is discussed below:

• Consistency Across Environments: Containers ensure that the same code executes in a similar manner in all environments—be it development, testing, staging, or production. Consistency aids in avoiding the common issue of “works on my machine” and helps make the application run consistently at each stage in the software life cycle.
• Simplified Dependency Management: Containers bundle all the dependencies and libraries with the application in one unit. This eliminates any opportunity for conflicts or incompatibility between environments, with each environment being standalone. Developers no longer must worry about missing libraries or incompatibility in terms of versions, and therefore failures in conventional environments can occur.
• Faster Collaboration and Deployment: Containers allow development, testing, and operations groups to work in parallel with no regard for environment mismatches. With a parallel workflow, collaboration is maximized, and both groups can work on their portion with no encumbrances of configuration and setup. Besides, containers make for quick deployment, for they can transition between environments with minimum re-adjustments.
• Scalability and Resource Efficiency: Containers are lightweight and efficient, utilizing fewer system resources in contrast to traditional virtual machines. It is easy to scale them to tackle increased workloads with minimum overhead. With increased use and demand for distribution over a range of servers, both vertically and horizontally, both containers and virtual machines have the malleability to manage and utilize performance and resources effectively.

Containers in the CI/CD Pipeline

Containers are at the core of both improving Continuous Integration (CI) and Continuous Deployment (CD) processes. How they contribute to each stage of a pipeline is discussed below:

1. Streamlined CI (Continuous Integration):

• Containers provide an environment that is uniform and isolated for software development and testing, with a rapid and dependable integration process.
• With containers, developers can have confidence that the code will execute consistently in any environment, with reduced integration complications and accelerated CI processing.

1. Automated Testing in Containers:

• Containers enable standalone environments through which unit tests, integration tests, and other tests can run in a standalone environment, unencumbered by any interfering processes or dependencies.
• Containers can be simply built and disassembled, and tests can execute in a new environment, improving test reliability and eliminating such problems as “environment drift.”

1. Continuous Deployment (CD) with Containers:

• Containers make deploying predictable and repeatable and reduce the opportunity for issues during releases. With both the application and its dependencies packaged together, deploying them is less complicated.
• Containers also make versioning easier and enable simple rollbacks in case something fails. In case a deployment fails, rolling back to a preceding version of a container is simple, and releases become less buggy.

Best Practices for Using Containers in DevOps and CI/CD

To get the most out of your DevOps and your pipelines for CI/CD, apply these best practices:

1. Optimize Container Images:

• Use smaller, optimized container images for reduced build times and overall performance.
• Minimizing image dimensions lessens its loading time when extracted out of the registry and reduces requirements for storing, both in development and production environments.

1. Security Measures:

• Regularly scan your container images for vulnerabilities to secure your applications.
• Keep images current with security patches and updates installed regularly. This will minimize the use of outdated parts with security vulnerabilities.

1. Monitor Containerized Applications:

• Implement monitoring tools for tracking the performance and health of containers in the pipeline.
• Monitoring ensures that any problem or inefficiencies can be detected and resolved in a timely manner and that the application can maintain its stability during its progression through several phases of deployment.
• By following these best practices, your DevOps and CI/CD processes will become efficient, secure, and reliable, and your full potential for containers will be maximized.

Conclusion

Containers are important in supporting DevOps and CI/CD pipelines by providing uniformity, scalability, and efficiency in development and delivery. They eliminate environment discrepancies, simplify dependencies, and allow for rapid and reliable software delivery. As container technology continues to evolve, its influence will increasingly dominate software development in the future, and most particularly in microservices and cloud-native architectures.

Looking ahead, containerization will remain at the focal point of development best practices, with processes being automated, deploying processes becoming streamlined, and resources becoming optimized. To drive your DevOps and your CI/CD processes in a positive direction, exploring containerization is a step in that direction.

If you’re interested in taking advantage of containerization for enhanced DevOps efficiency, then try out Apiculus. With our containerization options, your workflows can become optimized, and your software delivery can become accelerated.

Cloud is at the center of every organisation’s digital transformation journey, even more so in the pandemic-disrupted business environment, also widely known as the ‘new normal’. While most organisations have adopted cloud in some form before the pandemic, the trend has been accelerated on a much larger scale in recent times. However, the business outcomes from cloud deployments often vary for different organisations. At the same time, some organisations may not even get the desired benefits — or even negative outcomes — from the cloud. This leads us to one of the most burning questions for IT and business leaders — How can one technology yield different results or no results for different organisations?

To find an answer to this, organisations need to deliberate on the following two questions:

• What are the business outcomes to be achieved?
• What’s the best way to approach cloud deployments?

Only when these fundamental questions are addressed, and the myths around cloud are busted, it can be realised that cloud as a technology is not an issue. Instead, it’s the way organisations approach and deploy the technology that defines the business outcomes. Thanks to all the hype around cloud, organisations often have much higher expectations from cloud. However, like every other technology, cloud is meant to address business-specific challenges; it is not a single solution for all enterprise IT needs. This realisation holds even greater emphasis as businesses today operate in a highly dynamic environment.

Let’s discuss what organisations need to ensure to get the best out of their cloud deployments.

Clearly define business objectives:

Before even considering cloud, the first step starts by defining the business objectives to be achieved. Once the outcomes are clear, the next step involves exploring cloud use cases and determining if they can help achieve the desired outcomes. Well-defined objectives coupled with the right use case will help you measure success and lay a clear roadmap.

Identify what needs to go on the cloud:

Identifying the right workloads to run on the cloud is crucial for achieving the best performance. While some applications might be ready to migrate to the cloud, some applications could need modernisation, whereas some applications could also require replacement. However, not all applications need cloud migration. Assess your application portfolio and identify mission-critical, business-critical, customer-facing, and non-critical applications. Key considerations include response time, latency, downtime for each workload.

Unlike born-in-the-cloud companies, traditional organisations have legacy infrastructure, wherein a lot of investment has been made over the years. This infrastructure could still be utilised for many business applications. In a nutshell, getting the best out of your legacy infrastructure and combining the use of cloud is the key to successful digital transformation.

Systematic deployment of cloud is critical:

Once the applications have been identified, the next crucial step is approaching cloud deployment the right way, in a structured manner. Prioritisation of applications to be moved first is the next important step. This is followed by understanding architectural requirements. Data centers have been the core of enterprise IT infrastructure and continue to remain so, and most organisations have an existing data center-centric network architecture. In such scenarios, a lift-and-shift approach leads to inefficiencies on various fronts and increased costs. Re-architecting network and security is imperative for a well-planned transition, especially in an era of distributed workforce wherein data and applications are accessed from remote locations through endpoints and networks that IT teams have little or no control over.

Securing your cloud environment:

Security is generally cited as an area of concern in boardrooms discussions on cloud adoption. Whether an organisation is part of a highly regulated industry or not, no business can afford a cyberattack in today’s digital economy and security evaluation becomes paramount in any cloud project. In the cloud era, security is a joint responsibility of customers and cloud services providers. While evaluating cloud services providers, some of the key considerations include identity and access management, automated threat detection tools, backup and disaster recovery.

Deployment is not enough; cloud management is crucial:

Your organisation has successfully deployed cloud, but what next? It is essential to keep the cloud environment running seamlessly at all times. In traditional organisations where IT teams used to manage everything on-premise, lack of cloud-native skillsets can lead to manageability and operational complexities, thereby impacting performance. Furthermore, in a business environment that’s defined by customer experience and innovation, monitoring and managing cloud infrastructure can affect your IT team’s focus on applications and innovation. Having the right cloud service provider with complete skillsets and management capabilities can ensure seamless operations and relieve your IT teams from cumbersome tasks, especially in a multi-cloud hybrid environment.

According to IDC, more than 60 percent of Indian organisations plan to leverage the cloud for digital innovation in the pandemic-disrupted era. As a result, India’s public cloud services market is expected to be worth USD 7.1 billion by 2024. But while organisations turn to promising technologies to enhance business outcomes, the key is to carefully identify business needs, constraints, and objectives. With this, coupled with elaborate planning and a tailored approach, businesses can get their cloud deployment right and achieve optimum results.

Source: https://www.cnbctv18.com/technology/five-mantras-to-unlock-maximum-benefits-from-your-cloud-deployment-11108572.htm

The year 2020 will go down in history books for many reasons. One of those is that the business world is more distributed than ever — customers, partners, and employees work from their own locations (and rarely their offices) today. What does that mean for businesses? The consumer touchpoints are different today, wherein supply chains and delivery networks have changed. This is where organisations have to find new ways to deliver value and new experiences to customers.

In response to the pandemic, business organisations had to fundamentally change the way they operate. They had to transform processes, models, and supply chains for service delivery. To sustain business and remain competitive in a post-COVID world, they had to challenge the status quo and make a lot of changes.

Digital is no longer an option 

When the global pandemic gripped the world in March this year, organisations with three to five-year digital transformation plans were forced to execute plans in a few months or days. Either that or they would go out of business.

A new IBM study of global C-Suite executives revealed that nearly six in 10 organisations have accelerated their digital transformation journey due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In fact, 66% of executives said they have completed initiatives that previously encountered resistance. In India, 55% of Indian executives plan to prioritise digital transformation efforts over the next two years.

This calls for new skills, strategies, and priorities. And the cloud and associated digital technologies will strongly influence business decisions in the post-COVID era. Organisations need to have a full-fledged cloud strategy and draw up a roadmap for cloud migration.

To achieve this, the leading-edge companies are aligning their business transformation efforts with the adoption of public and hybrid cloud platforms. For many sectors, remaining productive during lockdown depended on their cloud-readiness. Operating without relying too heavily on on-premise technology was key and will remain vital in the more digitally minded organisation of the future. In a way, we can say that with the right approach, strategy, vision, and platform, a modern cloud can ignite end-to-end digital transformation in ways that could only be imagined in the pre-Covid era.

To deliver new and innovative services and customer experiences, businesses – be it large corporates, MSMEs, or  start-ups – all are embracing disruptive technologies like cloud, IoT, artificial intelligence, machine learning, blockchain, big data analytics, etc., to drive innovative and profitable business models.

For instance, introducing voice interfaces and chat bots for customer helpdesk is a compute intensive task that requires big data analytics and artificial intelligence in the cloud. This enables customers to just speak to a search bot if they need help in ordering products on an e-commerce website. They can also order the product just by speaking to voice bot like Siri or Alexa, for instance. The same is applicable for banking services. Voice based interfaces are enabling conversational banking, which also requires processing in the cloud. These services simplify and improve the customer experience and provide customer delight. But to introduce such innovative service requires an overhaul and transformation of traditional business processes – that’s digital transformation.

Solving infrastructure & cost challenges

Cloud computing has been around for ages, but CIOs still grapple with cloud challenges such as lack of central control, rising / unpredicted cost, complexity of infrastructure, security & compliance, and scaling. However, over the years, public cloud technology has evolved to address these challenges.

Central Control: Public cloud offers dashboards through which one can monitor and control cloud compute resources centrally irrespective where it is hosted (multicloud).

Managing Complexity: IT infrastructure is getting increasingly complex and CIOs have to deal with multiple vendors for cloud resources. Infrastructure is spread out over multiple clouds, usually from different vendors. And various best of breed solutions are selected and integrated into the infrastructure. As a result, the management of all these clouds and technologies poses a huge challenge. CIOs want to simply the management of infrastructure through a single window or single pane of glass. Cloud orchestration, APIs, dashboards, and other tools are available to do this.

Reducing Costs: Demands on IT resources are increasing but budgets remain the same and lack of billing transparency adds to it. Public cloud addresses both issues as it offers tremendous cost savings as you do not make upfront capital investments in infrastructure. There’s also a TCO benefit since you do not make additional investments to upgrade on-premise infrastructure – that’s because you rent the infrastructure and pay only for what you consume. The cloud service provider makes additional investments to grow the infrastructure. There are cost savings on energy, cooling, and real-estate as well.

And since usage of resources is metered, one can view the exact consumption and billing on a monthly, quarterly, or annual basis. Usage information is provided through dashboards and real time reports, to ensure billing transparency.

Compliance & Regulation: Regulatory and compliance demands for data retention and protection may be taxing for your business.

Automated Scaling: Public cloud offers the ability to scale up or down to provision the exact capacity that your business needs, to avoid overprovisioning or under utilisation of deployed resources. Cloud service providers ensure that the resources are available on-demand, throughout the year, even when business peaks during festive seasons. And this scaling can happen automatically.

Global Reach: Apart from scale and cost savings, the cloud offers global reach, so that your customers can access your services from anywhere in the world. Furthermore, the cloud’s ability to explore the value of vast unstructured data sets is next to none, which in turn is essential for IoT and AI. Big Data can be processed using special analytics technologies in the cloud.

Agility: The cloud also makes your business agile because it allows you to quickly enhance services and applications – or a shorter time-to-market for launching new products and services.

Then there’s the benefit of control and management. A ‘self-service cloud portal’ offers complete management of your compute instances and cloud resources such as network, storage, and security.  The self-service nature offers agility, enabling organisations to quickly provision additional resources and introduce enhancements or new services.

With all these advantages, businesses clearly recognise the need for transformation and are gradually leaving legacy technologies behind in favour of next-generation technologies as they pursue competitive advantage. Public cloud is critical to this shift, thanks not only to the flexibility of the delivery model but also to the ease with which servers can be provisioned, reducing financial as well as business risks.

It will not be possible for most companies to transform their businesses digitally unless they move some of their IT applications and infrastructure into public or hybrid clouds.

Key considerations for cloud migration

Regulation and compliance are other vital considerations. What kind of compliance standards has your service provider adopted? There are industry-specific standards like HIPAA for data security and privacy. Besides, there are standards like PCI-DSS applicable across industries — and regionally specific standards like GDPR. Ask about compliance with all those standards.

Keep in mind that the onus of protecting data on the public cloud lies with both – the tenant and the cloud service provider. Hence, it would be a good idea to hire an external consultant’s services to ensure compliance and adherence to all the standards. This should be backed by annual audits and penetration testing to test the robustness and security of the infrastructure.

You also want to ensure resilience and business continuity. What kind of services and redundancy are available to ensure that?

Ask your cloud service provider for guarantees on uptime, availability, and response time. The other aspects to check are level of redundancy, restoration from failure, and frequency of backup. All this should be backed by service level agreements (SLAs) with penalty clauses for lapses in service delivery.

WAN optimization, load balancing and robust network design, with N+N redundancy for resources, and hyperscale data centres ensure high availability. But this should be backed by industry standard certifications such as ISO 20000, ISO, 9001, ISO 27001, PCI/DSS, Uptime Institute Tier Standard, ANI/BICSI, TIA, OIX-2, and other certifications. These certifications assure credibility, availability, and uptime.

Do you remember what happened when the city of Mumbai lost power on October 12 this year? Most data centres continued operations as they had backup power resources. And that’s why their customers’ businesses were not impacted by the power failure.

A key concern is transparency in accounting and billing. Ask about on-demand consumption billing with no hidden charges. How are charges for bandwidth consumption accounted for? Some service providers do not charge extra for inbound or outbound data transfer and this can result in tremendous cost savings. Do they offer hourly or monthly billing plans?

Public cloud for business leadership

Enterprises that still haven’t implemented cloud technologies will be impeded in their digital transformation journeys because of issues with legacy systems, slower change adaptability, longer speed to market and an inability to adapt to fast-changing customer expectations.

Companies are recognising the public cloud’s capabilities to generate new business models and promote sustainable competitive advantage. They also acknowledge the need for implementing agile systems and believe that cloud technology is critical to digital transformation.

However, the cloud does present specific challenges, and one needs to do due diligence and ask the right questions. Businesses need to decide which processes and applications need to be digitalised. Accordingly, IT team needs to select the right cloud service provider and model.

The careful selection of a cloud service provider is also crucial. Look at the service provider’s financial strength. Where is your business data being hosted? What kind of guarantees can they give in terms of uptime? What about compliance and security? These are vital questions to ask.

Switching from one cloud service provider to another is possible but not a wise choice due to many technical and business complexity., so look for long-term relationships. An experienced and knowledgeable service provider can ensure a smooth journey to cloud – and successful digital transformation.

Source: https://www.cnbctv18.com/technology/view-how-can-cios-drive-digital-transformation-by-maximizing-the-value-of-cloud-8011661.htm