Unlike
a laptop or piece of IT hardware that you only pay for once, cloud computing is
a constant entry on enterprises’ balance sheets. Cloud adoption across West
Africa remains a net positive as growing demand leads to increased availability
of infrastructure and vendors. Still, there is always the potential for
organisations to lose control of their spending, whether it’s because of
internal circumstances or ones beyond their control.
No
cloud strategy is complete without a cost management system in place, and that
system becomes more critical as competition in the region reaches new levels
and cloud service providers work to offer the best value proposition to
enterprises. The key to success lies with enterprises taking a more rounded,
long-term view of cloud computing, treating it as an ongoing expenditure that
requires continuous monitoring and collaboration, backed by new management
practices and clarity on what they want the cloud to do for them.
Managing cloud costs with the help of FinOps
Companies move to the cloud for many
reasons, but chief among them are the benefits of flexible and scalable IT
infrastructure at a higher level of cost efficiency. But that efficiency isn’t
always guaranteed. Mismanagement and a failure to properly migrate to or handle
cloud resources can lead to companies overspending. This can be the result of overprovisioning
resources or underutilising them, inflated cloud data transfer and storage
costs, cloud misconfigurations, or a lack of governance and oversight.
West
African businesses need a cloud model that suits them, whether it’s pay-as-you-go,
a fixed monthly or annual subscription, or reserved or spot instances that provide
extra flexibility to enterprises and potentially offered with sizable
discounts. At the same time, they can utilise cost control features such as
resource tagging, APIs for real-time usage notifications, and AI/ML-powered
analysis and forecasting tools that are now readily available.
A
big component of cloud cost management is FinOps, which combines finance and
DevOps for maximum accountability and oversight. Cloud environments are
inherently complex and so to achieve cost optimisation, all relevant teams need
to be hands-on and aware of how budgets are being spent. FinOps also allows
enterprises to more effectively enforce governance and compliance procedures,
which in turn inform and shape the financial decisions enterprises need to
make.
The hyperscale value proposition
Never
before have African businesses had such a level of choice when it comes to
cloud service providers. At the same time, hyperscalers have evolved their
value offering as the cloud becomes standard practice for businesses, and they
themselves become invested in helping businesses achieve their organisational
goals.
When
selecting a hyperscaler to partner with, businesses in West Africa should
consider the following factors:
Cost: Easily the most
important factor, businesses can determine the value offering of hyperscalers
based on their committed spend agreements as well as hyperscalers’ effort to
expand their capacity, partnerships, and capabilities as a holistic cloud
services provider.
Compatibility: Businesses
cannot waste capital and resources having to retrofit their existing
applications to be compatible with a new computing environment. By prioritising
interoperability as part of the selection process, they can identify which
providers can deliver the smoothest migration process.
Scalability/Agility: Hyperscalers
must be able to respond to businesses’ IT needs, scaling systems and allocating
resources as needed. This includes handling data transfers efficiently.
Support: Not every
business has the same level of access to cloud skills and expertise, and should
therefore be able to turn to their hyperscalers for support.
Hyperscalers
have also begun to increase their focus on data sovereignty and residency,
addressing concerns related to data protection and compliance, itself a growing
concern among African enterprises. With features such as local availability
zones and specialised privacy solutions, enterprises can keep their data where
it needs to be and adhere to any relevant data regulations.
Collaboration makes for resilient, cost-effective cloud
Making cost management a part of
your enterprise’s cloud migration strategy isn’t difficult, not when it is
built into both hyperscalers’ service offerings and the platforms that
enterprises today use to build applications and software. For example,
enterprise containerisation software can come equipped with a cost management tool
that enables businesses to track their cloud spend and understand the cost of
their clusters, either in the public cloud or on-premise.
But more
than that, enterprises need to assume a collaborative stance with their cloud and
platform vendors, making them a part of the organisation’s journey and digital
transformation. They are invested in your future because it is tied to their
own, and it’s through collaboration that enterprises can achieve the best
results and build the next generation of cloud-enabled business applications
and solutions.
By: By
Oluwafiropo Tobi Ogundare, Regional Sales Lead for West Africa &
Mauritius at Red Hat
