Reduce Cloud Concentration Risks with Proven Strategies! 🌐🛡️

In today's rapidly evolving digital landscape, businesses increasingly rely on cloud services for their agility, scalability, and cost-efficiency. However, with this dependence comes a significant risk: over-reliance on a single cloud provider. This cloud concentration risk can lead to vulnerabilities such as service disruptions, vendor lock-in, and innovation constraints. To safeguard your operations and ensure resilience, it's crucial to adopt strategies that mitigate these risks effectively.

Our latest report delves into practical strategies that businesses can implement to reduce cloud concentration risks. Below, we summarise some of the key approaches to protect your business and maintain operational adaptability.

1. Within a Single Cloud Provider: Strengthen Your Strategy

While diversifying across multiple providers is ideal, there are effective strategies you can implement within a single provider framework to mitigate concentration risks.

Key Actions:

• Understand SLAs: Review your cloud service-level agreements to understand guaranteed uptime, performance, and support levels. Ensure they meet your business requirements and identify any potential gaps.

• Use Multiple Regions: Deploy workloads across multiple regions and availability zones to reduce the impact of localised outages.

• Implement Robust Backup and Disaster Recovery: Establish and regularly test backup and disaster recovery processes to ensure quick recovery from outages.

2. Multi-Cloud Strategy: Distribute Your Workloads

A multi-cloud approach involves using multiple cloud providers instead of relying on just one. This strategy can significantly enhance resilience and continuity. By distributing workloads, data, and applications across providers like Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and Google Cloud Platform (GCP), you can minimise the impact of any single provider's service disruption.

Benefits of Multi-Cloud Strategy:

• Increased Resilience: If one provider experiences an outage, operations can failover to another, ensuring business continuity.

• Access to Best-of-Breed Solutions: Different providers offer unique services and capabilities, enabling you to leverage the best tools for your specific needs.

• Avoid Vendor Lock-In: Reduces dependency on a single provider, giving you greater flexibility and bargaining power.

3. Opt for Vendor-Neutral Solutions

To reduce dependency on proprietary services, choose solutions that adhere to open standards or have readily available alternatives from other providers. This approach facilitates easier migration and integration across different cloud environments.

Advantages:

• Portability: Open standards and vendor-neutral solutions make it simpler to move workloads between providers.

• Flexibility: Reduces the risk of being locked into a single provider's ecosystem, giving you the freedom to adapt to changing business needs.

4. Embrace Automation and Cloud-Native Practices

Automating infrastructure provisioning, security policies, and compliance checks can significantly reduce the complexity of managing multiple cloud environments. Embracing cloud-native practices such as microservices, containers, and serverless computing can enhance portability and scalability.

Benefits of Automation:

• Consistency: Automated processes ensure consistent implementation of policies and reduce the risk of human error.

• Efficiency: Streamlines operations, making it easier to manage complex multi-cloud environments.

5. Invest in Multi-Cloud Management Tools

To manage the complexities of a multi-cloud environment, investing in the right tools is essential. Multi-cloud management tools provide centralised visibility into resource utilisation, costs, and security posture across different cloud environments.

Key Tools and Their Benefits:

• Centralised Monitoring and Logging: Unified view of metrics, dashboards, and alerts across multiple clouds.

• Cost Management: Track spending, optimise costs, and prevent unexpected expenses.

• Security Management: Apply consistent security policies and access controls across all cloud platforms.

Summary

Mitigating cloud concentration risks is an ongoing journey that requires careful planning and strategic implementation. By adopting a multi-cloud approach, implementing robust backup and disaster recovery plans, using multiple regions and availability zones, opting for vendor-neutral solutions, and embracing automation, businesses can protect themselves against potential vulnerabilities and ensure operational resilience.

To dive deeper into these strategies and explore actionable recommendations for your business, check out our comprehensive report and follow us for more in our series on Cloud Concentration Risk.

Download our full report on Cloud Concentration Risk for more detailed advice on mitigating your risks.

Navigating the Cloud Transition: How the VMware-Broadcom Shift is Driving Organisations Toward Microsoft Azure Solutions

As we reach the midpoint of 2024, a discussion still prominent in the broader IT sector is the evolving situation with VMware. The aggressive acquisition strategy of Broadcom, notably its focus on maximising profit, is creating significant unrest and doubt. This uncertainty seems to be extending to both VMware's small to medium-sized enterprise (SME) and larger corporate customer base.

Our comprehensive research for the well-received SC:Strategy, which, at its core examines enterprise IT infrastructures, consistently reveals a trend: organisations are sweating the life of their hardware assets (both compute and storage), while continuing to use their VMware virtualisation platforms, wondering what to do next and when to make a change. Despite the well-documented advantages of cloud technology, some SMEs to this point have remained unconvinced by the arguments for transitioning to the cloud, remaining content with the status quo.

However, the current instability and uncertainties surrounding VMware's future appear to be a significant turning point. Increasingly, organisations that were once hesitant about adopting cloud solutions are now contemplating them as viable alternatives. This shift is particularly evident when considering tactical factors such as hosting contract breakpoints, estate and facility reviews, and strategic moves towards data and artificial intelligence.

The VMware-Broadcom situation has created both challenges and opportunities for organisations relying on virtualisation technologies. So, for organisations considering a shift to cloud technology in 2024, there are various options available and it's important to understand how to approach this transition effectively.

Let’s take a closer look at two popular pathways to Azure and explore which one might be the right fit for your needs.

Azure Virtual Machines

This is Azure’s core compute service, allowing you to run various operating systems in the cloud. While powerful and flexible, migrating your existing VMware workloads to Azure VMs may require upfront investment, potential application refactoring, and a shift in your IT team’s skill set. However, this transition offers a valuable opportunity to rationalise and modernise your existing workloads, evaluate and optimise your infrastructure, and achieve enhanced performance and cost efficiencies.

Migrating to Azure allows for upgrading outdated systems to meet future demands, resulting in a more scalable, flexible, and resilient digital infrastructure. Although this transition may require considerable initial investment, the long-term benefits are substantial. It is essential for IT teams to develop new cloud-based competencies, including cloud architecture, automation, and security best practices, to fully capitalise on the advantages of cloud adoption.

Azure VMWare Solution

This is a dedicated service specifically for running your VMware workloads in Azure. Think of it as your familiar VMware environment, just hosted on Microsoft’s Infrastructure.

This is particularly relevant for organisations that have developed strong VMware virtualisation expertise over the past decade, with skilled IT teams managing well-maintained platforms. For these organisations, the idea of completely transitioning to cloud-native services might seem like a risky move with limited benefits, especially if they rely heavily on traditional Windows and Linux applications that are not evolving rapidly.

Q: But isn’t this still reliant on VMWare, how does that help our concerns?

Well, the current uncertainty extends into the VMware private cloud space as well. As The Register reported following the recent launch of the new Broadcom Advantage Partner Program for VMware Cloud Service Provider Partners, some partners expressed frustration with what they perceived as a lack of clear communication and support. This period of uncertainty left many questioning the future of the program.

However, unlike relying on third-party private cloud providers AVS is backed by a strong and committed partnership between Microsoft and VMware.

But there is also an additional level of reassurance with AVS. As it runs on Azure, you benefit from Microsoft’s Extended Security Update Program for eligible products. This means even if you’re running older Windows Servers versions or SQL Server instances within your VMware environment you can gain valuable breathing room to plan your modernisation strategy without compromising security.

If this scenario resonates with you, Azure VMware Solution could be your ideal choice. With AVS you can extend or migrate your on-premises VMware environment into Azure, minimising disruption while maximising your team’s existing expertise. This means you’ll face a shallower learning curve and faster path to realising cloud benefits.

But AVS isn’t just about “lifting and shifting”. It is about strategically positioning yourself to adopt modern cloud practice like DevOps and FinOps, unlocking new possibilities with data, AI and cloud-native services – all while maintaining the stability and familiarity of your VMware environment. Start with the AVS resources you need now and effortlessly scale up or down as your business evolves. As you modernise applications, or embrace SaaS solutions, you can adapt your AVS footprint accordingly.

Want to find out more?

In our discussions with organisations contemplating change and seeking business buy-in, two crucial questions consistently arise.

• How do cloud costs compare to our VMWare estate post-renewal?

• What would our timeline for transitioning to AVS look like?

To address these pivotal questions quickly and confidently, we are excited to introduce our free AVS Business Case Accelerator offer. This service is designed to help businesses make informed decisions and build a compelling case for moving to the cloud with the support of a data-driven assessment, financial analysis, technical readiness evaluation and sustainability impact report. Find out more here, or contact us today to discuss how we can support your business.

Leon Fox
Chief Technologist
Shaping Cloud

hello@shapingcloud.com

Cloud-Powered AI: Maximising Business Potential

In today’s rapidly evolving digital landscape, organisations are increasingly turning to the cloud to optimise their operations, enhance scalability, and gain a competitive edge. As businesses strive to harness the power of artificial intelligence (AI), migrating workloads to the cloud becomes a strategic imperative. Let’s explore why clients need to embrace this transformation and how it unlocks the full potential of AI.

The Cloud as an Enabler

1. Scalability and Flexibility: Traditional on-premises infrastructure often struggles to keep pace with dynamic business demands. Cloud platforms, such as Microsoft Azure, offer unparalleled scalability. Organisations can seamlessly adjust resources up or down based on workload requirements. Whether it’s handling seasonal spikes or accommodating sudden growth, the cloud ensures agility and cost-effectiveness.

2. Data Accessibility: AI thrives on data. The cloud provides a centralised repository for data storage and processing. By migrating workloads, clients consolidate their data, making it accessible to AI models and algorithms. Whether it’s customer behaviour data, sensor readings, or transaction logs, the cloud facilitates efficient ingestion and analysis.

3. Cost Optimisation: Cloud adoption eliminates the need for hefty upfront investments in hardware and maintenance. Clients pay only for the resources they consume, optimising costs. Additionally, cloud providers offer AI-specific services, such as Azure Machine Learning, which allow clients to build, train, and deploy models without the burden of managing infrastructure.

AI Unleashed: The Cloud Advantage

1. Machine Learning and Deep Learning: The cloud democratises AI by providing pre-built tools and frameworks. Organisations can leverage machine learning (ML) and deep learning (DL) libraries without reinventing the wheel. Azure’s AutoML simplifies model selection, hyperparameter tuning, and deployment. Clients can focus on solving business problems rather than wrestling with ML complexities.

2. Scalable AI Workloads: AI workloads can be resource-intensive. The cloud’s elastic compute capacity ensures smooth execution of complex algorithms. Whether it’s natural language processing, image recognition, or predictive analytics, clients benefit from high-performance computing without worrying about hardware limitations.

3. Real-Time Insights: Cloud-based AI services enable real-time decision-making. Imagine an e-commerce platform recommending personalised products to users based on their browsing history. With Azure Cognitive Services, clients can extract sentiment analysis, entity recognition, and language understanding from unstructured text. Real-time insights drive customer engagement and revenue growth.

Overcoming Challenges

1. Security and Compliance: Clients often express concerns about data security in the cloud. However, leading cloud providers invest heavily in robust security measures. Azure offers encryption, identity management, and compliance certifications. By partnering with a trusted consultancy, clients can navigate security challenges effectively.

2. Change Management: Migrating workloads requires organisational buy-in. Employees must adapt to new processes and tools. Shaping Cloud assists clients in change management, ensuring a smooth transition. Training, communication, and stakeholder engagement play a crucial role in successful cloud adoption.

The cloud isn’t merely a technological shift; it’s a business transformation. Clients who embrace cloud migration position themselves to unlock AI’s full potential. Shaping Cloud, as an Azure cloud consultancy, guides organisations on this transformative journey. From workload assessment to AI model deployment, we empower clients to thrive in the age of intelligence.

Want to find out more? Get in touch!

Paul Willmore
Head of Managed Services
Shaping Cloud

paul.willmore@shapingcloud.com

Shaping Cloud named one of the UK’s Best Workplaces™ 2024

Shaping Cloud is proud to announce that we have been named among the top UK’s Best Workplaces 2024 List by Great Place To Work®

Our ranking was revealed at the prestigious UK’s Best Workplaces Awards at Grovesnor House in the heart of London, which are considered the ‘gold standard’ of employer awards. Independently assessed through a rigorous and unique process, those on the list have proved they have created a great workplace culture built on trust, supported by innovative people management practices. Achieving our position in the SME category fills us with pride as we're officially acknowledged for our commitment to inclusion, quality, and growth.

To compile the UK’s Best Workplaces™ List, Great Place To Work analysed confidential employee survey feedback on trust and reaching their full human potential, as well as employees’ experiences of innovation, company values, and leadership effectiveness across departments and seniority levels. They then used these data insights to benchmark the effectiveness of companies' employee value propositions against the culture their employees actually experience. Only those businesses who achieve the highest scores after evaluation receive Best Workplaces status.

From our anonymous employee feedback, we can see that overall our team highly commends our dedication to ongoing learning, individual growth, and the culture of knowledge exchange across our business. 

We’re so proud of this achievement and look forward to using the valuable insights Great Place To Work has provided us with to build on our culture and employee satisfaction. If you would like to be part of our GREAT team, check out our latest vacancies here Shaping Cloud - Current Openings (workable.com)

Maximising Your Business with Azure Virtual Desktop: A Managed Service Partner’s Perspective

In our rapidly evolving business world, adaptability, efficiency, and security are not just desirable; they're essential. As a Managed Service Provider deeply invested in your success, we're thrilled to highlight how Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) is transforming the way businesses operate, especially in remote work scenarios. 

Key Advantages of Azure Virtual Desktop for Your Business: 

• Flexibility & Scalability: With AVD, adjusting to business fluctuations has never been easier. Our managed services ensure that your virtual desktop infrastructure scales seamlessly with your needs, without the complexities of physical hardware. 

• Unmatched Security: Leveraging Azure's comprehensive security framework, we guarantee the protection of your data and applications through cutting-edge measures, ensuring peace of mind. 

• Cost-Effectiveness: Say goodbye to unnecessary IT expenses. AVD's consumption-based pricing model, managed by us, means you pay only for what you use, optimising your IT budget. 

• Collaboration Without Borders: Through AVD, integrated with Microsoft 365, we enable your teams to collaborate efficiently, no matter where they are located. 

Why Partner with Us for Azure Virtual Desktop? 

We provide more than just solutions; we deliver peace of mind. Our managed Azure Virtual Desktop services include streamlined management, ensuring business continuity, and offering customisation to meet the unique needs of every user in your organisation. 

The Path Forward

The transition to remote work is an opportunity to reimagine how we work. With Azure Virtual Desktop, we're not just responding to current trends; we're stepping into a future of greater flexibility, security, and efficiency. As your trusted MSP, we're ready to guide you through every step of this journey, ensuring that Azure Virtual Desktop is not just implemented but optimised to transform your business operations. 

Customer Spotlight: The Transformation Journey of Top 100 Law Firm with Azure Virtual Desktop:

Our collaboration with a top 100 law firm demonstrates a transformative journey from an on-premise Citrix estate Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD), highlighting a strategic evolution in their IT infrastructure. Faced with the challenges of an aging system, the client sought to modernise and streamline their operations, aiming for cost reductions and enhanced efficiency. The partnership with Shaping Cloud played a pivotal role in navigating the transition, leveraging our expertise to develop a tailored AVD solution that aligns with their strategic vision.

The process began with a comprehensive assessment, evaluating the existing Citrix setup and identifying opportunities for improvement. This led to the implementation of a dynamic proof of concept for AVD, allowing the client to test and experience the capabilities of the new system first-hand. The focus on key applications, including legal and everyday office tools, during the pilot phase demonstrated AVD's ability to meet their specific needs effectively.

The successful transition to Azure Virtual Desktop culminated in significant benefits for the client, including cost savings, technological consolidation, and enhanced scalability. The move away from on-premise Citrix to AVD not only optimised their digital infrastructure but also ensured they were ready to meet the demands of the future.

Let's Embark on This Journey Together: 

Understanding the importance of firsthand experience, Shaping Cloud now offers a proof of concept (PoC) environment for our customers. This innovative platform allows you to test Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD), providing a tangible understanding of its capabilities and potential impact on your operations. Our PoC environment is designed to enable you to evaluate the flexibility, security, and efficiency that AVD can bring to your business. With this hands-on approach, you can see exactly how our managed Azure Virtual Desktop services can be tailored to meet your specific needs, ensuring that you make informed decisions about integrating this powerful solution into your IT strategy. Explore the possibilities with us and get a feel for how AVD can revolutionise your remote work infrastructure and overall business model. 
 
Discover how Azure Virtual Desktop can redefine your business landscape. Reach out to us today, and let's explore how we can tailor AVD to meet your specific business needs.  

Paul Willmore
Head of Managed Services
Shaping Cloud

paul.willmore@shapingcloud.com

Bridging the trust gap between your employees and AI

You’ve probably been considering how to harness the potential of AI to boost your company’s efficiency and productivity.

But there’s a small problem. A recent study revealed something fascinating but not entirely surprising: A trust gap when it comes to AI in the workplace.

While you see AI as a fantastic opportunity for business transformation, your employees might be sceptical and even worried about their job security.

Here’s a snapshot of the findings:

• 62% of C-suite executives welcome AI, but only 52% of employees share the same enthusiasm.

• 23% of employees doubt their company’s commitment to employee interests when implementing AI.

• However, 70% of business leaders believe that AI should include human review and intervention, showing they view AI as an assistant rather than a replacement.

Now that we understand the situation, how can you introduce AI gently and reassure your employees that their roles are safe?

Start by having open and honest conversations with your employees. Explain why you’re introducing AI and how it will benefit both the company and individual roles. Show them that AI is meant to be a helping hand, not a jobs terminator.

Invest in training that helps your people acquire the skills they need to work alongside AI. Make them feel empowered by showing that it can make their jobs more interesting and valuable.

Emphasise that your AI initiatives are designed to enhance human capabilities, not replace them. Let your team know that it will handle repetitive tasks, allowing them to focus on more creative and strategic aspects of their work.

Develop clear guidelines for responsible AI use in your business. Highlight your commitment to ethical practices and ensure that employees are aware of these policies.

Involve your employees in the implementation process. Seek their input, listen to their concerns, and make them part of the solution. This shows that you value their contributions.

Encourage a culture of continuous learning. Let your employees know that they’ll have opportunities for ongoing education and development, ensuring they stay relevant and valuable in the AI-driven workplace.

Introducing AI into your workplace doesn’t have to be a cause for concern among your employees. AI is a tool for growth and innovation, not a threat to job security.

If we can help you introduce the right AI tools in the right way, get in touch.

Paul Willmore
Head of Managed Services
Shaping Cloud

paul.willmore@shapingcloud.com