Managing Your Hybrid Cloud

July 14, 2017 / G C Network / Comments Off

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US Army Cloud Computing Class at Ft. Gordon, GA

By G C Network | June 24, 2011

A few weeks ago I had the distinct pleassue of teaching yet another US Army cloud computing class. This time the venue was Ft. Gordon, GA and the students definitely…

78 Agency Services Identified for Cloud Transition

By G C Network | May 29, 2011

The Office of Management and Budget recently released a list of 78 projects slated for transition to cloud over the next year. The most common application, according to a FierceGovernmentIT,…

NGA Sets GEOINT Strategic Direction with Earth Builder

By G C Network | May 15, 2011

Last month Google and the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency started sharing details about their “GEOINT on Demand” collaboration. The project, named Earth Builder, was built specifically to enable NGA to…

Teleology Systems Introduces CloudeFX at DoDIIS

By G C Network | April 27, 2011

Next week at DoDIIS, NJVC will be showcasing a few of our government cloud computing partners. One of the most exciting of these is the Cloud Service Orchestration Framework by…

Cloud Computing Highlighted at DoDIIS 2011

By G C Network | April 27, 2011

Are you going to DoDIIS? Schedule for May 1-5, 2011 in Detroit, Michigan, the conference highlights the Defense Intelligence Agency’s (DIA) commitment to developing and maintaining secure and reliable networks for…

Washington DC a Cloud Computing Trendsetter!

By G C Network | April 16, 2011

A TechJournal South article last week named Washington, DC as a leading trendsetter in cloud computing. Citing a Microsoft sponsored survey, conducted by 7th Sense research, D.C. was highlighted as particullarly receptive…

Melvin Greer Cited by IBM for Cloud Computing Innovation

By G C Network | April 5, 2011

Congratulations to my good friend Melvin Greer for being awarded IBM’s first ever ACE Award!! “Melvin Greer, Lockheed Martin Senior Fellow has won IBM’s first ever Awarding Customer Excellence (ACE)…

“GovCloud: The Book” Launched at National Press Club Event

By G C Network | March 30, 2011

As many of you know, today marked the official launch of my first book – GovCloud: Cloud Computing for the Business of Government. Today’s venue was the National Press Club…

“Cloud Musings on Forbes” Launched!!

By G C Network | March 24, 2011

Today I published my first post on Forbes.com!! At the invitation of Bruce Upbin, Forbes.com editor, I will be contributing posts monthly. I see this not only as an honor,…

Tech America and INSA Form Cloud Computing Advisory Groups

By G C Network | March 6, 2011

Last week TechAmerica announced the formation of a “cloud computing commission” to advise the White House on the current plans to steer more than $20B worth of IT services toward…

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Runaway cloud computing cost may be causing an information technology industry crisis. Expanding requirements, extended transition schedules and misleading marketplace hype have made “Transformation” a dirty word. Questions about how to manage cost variances and deviations with assets and cost across different suppliers abound. A recent Cloud Tech article explained that while public cloud offers considerable cost savings in comparison to private or on-premises based alternatives, there may also be significant hidden costs. Operational features like auto-scaling can cause costs to soar in line with demand for resources, making predicting costs difficult and budgeting even harder. There is also an acute need for a holistic and heterogeneous system that can track the costs of cloud services from the point of consumption (e.g., an application or business unit) down to the resources involved (e.g., storage or compute service).

Sitting at the apex of all of these issues is the CFO or corporate Vice President of Finance. As the key budget manager for most organizations, it is where many of the key financial decisions are made. This is also where the spectrum of IT cost responsibility extends from the pure financial analytics tasks of:

Optimization;
Forecasting and projection; and
Financial reporting

To the pedestrian but crucial accounting tasks like:

Show-backs and charge-backs
Charge reconciliation; and
Budgeting policy management

The most prevalent cause of these financial problems is a failure to keep track of virtual assets in the cloud. Many companies have lost complete visibility and control of cloud computing cost simply because they failed to tag and track these assets. Unfortunately, this error is typically realized after hundreds or even thousands of cloud based assets have been instantiated.

Experts have also outlined a five-step process that help enterprises bring control and governance to hybrid cloud IT cost.

Step 1: Establish governance thresholds and policies for services

Step 2: Access your cloud service provisioning accounts

Step 3: Track the costs of the services, including recurring and usage-based costs

Step 4: Enforce compliance on the costs and asset usage using the purpose built cost analytics engines; initiate and track changes

Step 5: Simulate and optimize the control and compliance actions and better control your costs

Managing spend and assets across hybrid clouds also requires the availability of actionable data. This will help the CFO focus on which assets are performing as expected and which are not. Predictive analytics and insight-based recommendations can also help to drive the prioritization of changes that can have the most effective impact.

These sort of challenges can certainly be acute but the solution for helping organizations gain control of these issues will typically include holistic hybrid cloud management. In fact, financial organizations are just now realizing their critical role in managing the operational expenditure model embraced by cloud computing. Services specifically designed to address the financial management aspects of cloud metering, billing, workload management and service provisioning policies are just now hitting the marketplace.

One of these leading financial management services is provided by IBM. Their newly launched Cost and Asset Management application helps companies address escalating cloud costs and complexity while offering guidance into the next steps of hybrid cloud transformation. Through the use of predictive analytics to monitor and provide recommendations on a single dashboard, this service can provide finance and IT on one system of reference for hybrid cloud governance. This particular service can establish and enforce governance control points using financial and technical policies. Its ability to easily combine asset tags with policies can help the CFO identify and respond to financial variances before they become problems. Through the innovative use of Watson Cognitive services, this particular application can tap into a years of IBM experience to offer recommendations using built-in advanced analytics and cognitive capabilities. Acting on these suggestions can streamline cloud usage, predict future trends and identify waste.

If your company is currently experiencing these digital transformation challenges, learn more about managing hybrid IT finances at ibm.biz/ExploreCloudBrokerage. Establishing a focus on cloud governance, cost and asset management is a truly essential step towards expanding the operational benefits of hybrid cloud.