Tag Archive for: Blogs

2023 could be the year of public cloud repatriation

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With cloud costs and complexity higher than expected, many enterprises are making a U-turn and putting applications and data back in traditional systems.

Here’s a topic we don’t discuss as much as we should: public cloud repatriation. Many regard repatriating data and applications back to enterprise data centers from a public cloud provider as an admission that someone made a big mistake moving the workloads to the cloud in the first place.

I don’t automatically consider this a failure as much as an adjustment of hosting platforms based on current economic realities. Many cite the high cost of cloud computing as the reason for moving back to more traditional platforms. 

High cloud bills are rarely the fault of the cloud providers. They are often self-inflicted by enterprises that don’t refactor applications and data to optimize their cost-efficiencies on the new cloud platforms. Yes, the applications work as well as they did on the original platform, but you’ll pay for the inefficiencies you chose not to deal with during the migration. The cloud bills are higher than expected because lifted-and-shifted applications can’t take advantage of native capabilities such as auto-scaling, security, and storage management that allow workloads to function efficiently.

It’s easy to point out the folly of not refactoring data and applications for cloud platforms during migration. The reality is that refactoring is time-consuming and expensive, and the pandemic put many enterprises under tight deadlines to migrate to the cloud. For enterprises that did not optimize systems for migration, it doesn’t make much economic sense to refactor those workloads now. Repatriation is often a more cost-effective option for these enterprises, even considering the hassle and expense of operating your own systems in your own data center.

In a happy coincidence, the prices of hard drive storage, networking hardware, computer hardware, power supplies, and other tech gear dropped in the past 10 years while cloud computing costs remained about the same or a bit higher.

Business is business. You can’t ignore the fact that it makes economic sense to move some workloads back to a traditional data center.

It makes the most sense to repatriate workloads and data storage that typically do a lot of the same thing, such as just storing data for long periods of time without any special data processing (e.g., no advanced artificial intelligence or business intelligence). These workloads can often move back to owned hardware and show a net gain ROI. Even with the added costs to take over and internalize operations, the enterprise saves money (or a lot of money) compared to equivalent public cloud hosting.

However, don’t forget that many workloads have dependencies on specialized cloud-based services. Those workloads typically cannot be repatriated because affordable analogs are unlikely to run on traditional platforms. When advanced IT services are involved (AI, deep analytics, massive scaling, quantum computing, etc.), public clouds typically are more economical.

Many enterprises made a deliberate business decision at the time to absorb the additional costs of running lifted-and-shifted applications on public clouds. Now, based on today’s business environment and economics, many enterprises will make a simple decision to bring some workloads back into their data center.

The overall goal is to find the most optimized architecture to support your business. Sometimes it’s on a public cloud; many times, it’s not. Or not yet. I learned a long time ago not to fall blindly in love with any technology, including cloud computing.

2023 may indeed be the year we begin repatriating applications and data stores that are more cost-effective to run inside a traditional enterprise data center. This is not a criticism of cloud computing. Like any technology, cloud computing is better for some uses than for others. That “fact” will evolve and change over time, and businesses will adjust again. No shame in that. Source: 2023 could be the year of public cloud repatriation | InfoWorld

Harness More Value From Technology for Profit – Some Tech Solutions to Look Into

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In the previous article we looked at how there were ways to save money in a business that prominently uses technology. As we found out, there was a lot of products available to make things more streamlined and that ended up costing less.

In this article we are going to have a look at some of the best profit friendly solutions which require little upfront commitment, yet offer great cost-saving, revenue-increasing potential.

Microsoft 365

Microsoft Office has been a go to collection of tools for businesses for just over a decade now and it is easy to see why. You can get so many useful tools like the tried and tested office apps, the saviour of communication over the pandemics, Microsoft Teams and even business automation tools all from one place.

SharePoint: Is an easy way to share documents to a whole team of people at once and keep them all organised, and it links so well to

Microsoft Teams: The app that has been the frontrunner for business communication, giving you the ability to do video and voice calls, schedule meetings, direct message and have chats with the whole team.

Outlook: The Microsoft email service.

Microsoft 365 is a prime example of a SaaS (software as a service) product. It has subscription packages available to suit any business and you per monthly in accordance with how many users you have.

Cloud Hosting

Traditionally you would have had to host and email server, website or application yourself in office which would have cost you on maintenance and electricity. However, in this day and age there are cloud providers that can provide all of this for a much cheaper cost. Because these cloud service providers have their services in bulk, they can provide them to you for an affordable price.

Managed Security

Managing data security can be very time consuming and your time is worth a lot of money, therefore offloading this job to an experienced managed security provider is an excellent solution. A managed security provider can back up all of your data, make a continuity strategy, and ensure your endpoints are protected. All things you would have to do yourself so, outsourcing this is definitely the most cost efficient option.

In the previous article we talked about the financial risks of data breaches and cyber attacks so, having all of this taken care of by a professional and reduce the likelihood of a financially crippling cyber attack.

Cloud Hosted VoIP

With the recent development that the UK are going to be decommissioning the ISDN telephone structure, businesses need to look to the future for a different way to run their phone systems. Cloud hosted VoIP is one of the most affordable solutions and requires almost no hardware making it one of, if not the, best solutions.

Another great reason to have VoIP is that you can make calls from anywhere with an internet connection. The systems also come packed with features such as auto attendants, call queues, call recording, voicemail-to-email and much more. Call bundles make it much more affordable especially when calling overseas.

We’re 4TC Managed IT Services

4TC can support you with all the services you need to run your business effectively, from email and domain hosting to fully managing your whole IT infrastructure.

Setting up a great IT infrastructure is just the first step.  Keeping it up to date, safe and performing at its peak requires consistent attention.

So we can act as either your IT department or to supplement an existing IT department. We pride ourselves in developing long term relationships that add value to your business with high quality managed support, expert strategic advice, and professional project management.

Harness More Value From Technology for Profit – What to Look For

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Currently, in the UK, we are in a challenging time economically. This means the pressure is on for SMEs to find new, innovative ways to reduce costs and increase revenue in order to remain competitive. For any businesses looking to make some savings on their technology, performing a tech strategy review can really help. Technology changes fast and reviewing it can reveal that much more efficient and cost effective versions might be available granting you an easy way to save money and increase profit margin.

There are some common qualities shared by the most profit friendly I.T solutions that you should look out for. Here are some of the most important ones:

Adaptability/Scalability

In recent years cloud computing has taken over businesses and has allowed for the infrastructure you once had to manage to be managed by a cloud service provider. This gives you access to more resources and is more cost efficient.

Remote capabilities

Having a lot of your company on cloud services not only makes sure that you don’t lose any work if hardware breaks but it also means you can access it from almost anywhere with an internet connection. You may be wondering how remote capabilities could save you money? The ability to work remotely can save money on everything, commuting costs, hardware costs, office space, utility bills for that office space and more. All if you do want to have an office space still it can be significantly more affordable as instead of having a desk setup up for every member of your team, you could just have a few hot desks instead.

Little to no physical infrastructure needed

Infrastructure in I.T is becoming obsolete. Cloud hosted services and VoIP solutions and the ability to develop custom apps perfectly suited to your business, reinventing your businesses I.T is no longer dependent on physical hardware or money. Having a cloud service provider means that the cost for the maintenance of the hardware falls onto the service provider and not you.

Automation

Many cloud services provide software tools that allow you to automate the time consuming menial tasks like accounting, time keeping, payroll and recruitment. This frees up members of your team to complete the more important tasks and therefore increase the overall yield of your business.

Security

The GDPR requires any data handlers, i.e. cloud service providers, to have effective security in place to ensure that the personal data they are storing is secure. With data breaches also costing UK firms on average £1200, it is very important to make sure you have effective security in place as it will end up saving you the money it costs to deal with data breaches or cyber attacks.

We’re 4TC Managed IT Services

4TC can support you with all the services you need to run your business effectively, from email and domain hosting to fully managing your whole IT infrastructure.

Setting up a great IT infrastructure is just the first step.  Keeping it up to date, safe and performing at its peak requires consistent attention.

So we can act as either your IT department or to supplement an existing IT department. We pride ourselves in developing long term relationships that add value to your business with high quality managed support, expert strategic advice, and professional project management.