Article Written by Jerome Okutho, Nclouds

Are you currently thinking of using DevOps as a service cloud strategy within your company? Don't know how to transition to a cloud solution? Keep reading and you'll find an answer to all your questions.

Although cloud adoption is on the rise, a lot of enterprises still struggle with creating a formal cloud strategy. According to a recent study by IDC, just 3% of enterprise executives define their cloud strategies as "optimized." Almost half of the 6,159 respondents in the survey said they use an opportunistic or ad hoc cloud strategy.

The main reason why so many organizations are slow to adopt a unified cloud strategy is that their software development, and IT teams typically operate in silos. Ultimately, this leads to inefficient processes and mismanaged resources.

The DevOps as a service model solves this problem by making both teams work together. Not only does it improve communication, but it also allows your company to deploy products at a much faster rate than you would in a traditional Agile environment.

DevOps as a Service: The benefits of an optimized cloud strategy

An optimized cloud strategy has a direct impact a company's bottom line. Recent findings show that successfully implementing a cloud strategy results in an average increase of $1.6 million in revenue and a $1.2 million reduction in cost for every application a your company deploys. In addition to cutting costs, a cloud solution also has the following benefits:

Better agility

Cloud environments give you the ability to provision computer resources quickly, which increases your business' agility and security. Provisioning usually takes weeks or months in typical IT shops, but with a fully optimized cloud solution, it could take as little as a few minutes.

Increased productivity

Cloud environments also make it easier for your employees to access critical applications anywhere and at any time. This allows them to make better use of their time, which leads to improved productivity.

Greater risk management

Moving your applications to the cloud also reduces the cost associated with data recovery and downtime because cloud platforms offer more reliable access to applications than traditional IT systems.

Implementing an optimized cloud strategy

Implementing an optimized cloud strategy across your entire organization takes time. However, you can save yourself a lot of headaches by following the right steps. Below are three steps you should take when developing an effective cloud strategy for your organization.

1. Create a governance strategy

A good governance strategy will ensure that your organization establishes the right policies for managing its cloud solutions. Governance also enables your company to stay compliant with all regulatory measures and reduce instances of inefficient cloud usage. With a robust governance strategy, you'll be able to determine who is authorized to access a given cloud service. And the ways in which a cloud solution can be applied to your organization.

2. Get your analytics right

You need to leverage analytics tools such as Grapha and Statsd to ensure your cloud resources operate efficiently. High-quality cloud analytics tools will tell you everything you need to know about your cloud resource usage, and also give you an insight into the cost and savings of your cloud services.

3. Leverage service partners

The last step in developing an optimized cloud strategy is to partner with the right cloud services provider. At nClouds, we offer industry-leading cloud solutions for complex cloud architectures on AWS. We're experts at building fully automated infrastructures that enforce consistency across all levels of your development lifecycle and configuration management process.

We also use a variety of open source and AWS tools and open source tools such as Docker, ECS, kubernetes, Chef, and Ansible to drive growth for your company and improve the collaboration between your software and IT teams.

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About the Author

Jerome Okutho is an experienced content marketer at Nclouds cloud services, his articles focus on balancing informative with cloud-related needs. nClouds uses a variety of open source and AWS tools to drive growth for the company and improve the collaboration between software and IT teams. Contact us today to discuss your next project.