Maximizing ROI from Cloud Investments: Challenges with Building One Enterprise Cloud Network
How does the network help you get the most out of your cloud investment? Think of the network as a road you're building; it's the difference between constructing a road for trucks versus supercars. You need a network built for speed if you want to go fast in your supercar. A well-designed cloud network connects apps, services, and networks across multiple clouds with simplicity and efficiency, ensuring optimal performance. It should be designed to:
However, building a road for supercars in an ever-changing landscape has challenges.
Overcoming the first challenge: Architectures That Slow You Down
As companies expand their footprint in the cloud, they often encounter sluggish daily operations. One major issue that hinders seamless connectivity between apps, services, and networks is the lack of consistency in architecture across different clouds.
The lack of support for cross-cloud routing can further impede operations, as it limits the ability to transfer data between different cloud environments efficiently. This adds to the complexity and time-consuming nature of managing operations and increases the risk of errors and delays.
Insufficient data plane elasticity can also significantly impact operations performance. As data demands fluctuate, a rigid data plane can struggle to keep up, resulting in slower processing times and potential disruptions.
Another challenge is the absence of developer self-service; without the ability for developers to quickly and independently provision resources, simple tasks like setting up new regions can take months instead of days or even minutes.
Getting Cloud Control
Gaining control of your cloud infrastructure is no small feat. Implementing a zero-trust connectivity model involves handling complex and resource-intensive tasks like network segmentation, encryption, and detailed traffic inspection while leveraging your existing security investments.
The biggest challenge is viewing cloud usage across different business units. This often requires a robust cost visibility tool to simplify financial management, as gathering all your cloud bills across services is not a simple task. Additionally, you must ensure your infrastructure allows for data control and full administrative oversight, adding another layer of complexity.
A poorly designed cloud network can make your entire environment vulnerable to threats like malicious attacks and compliance issues. This often happens because security measures are added without proper planning, acting as temporary fixes that soon fail. For example, think of segmentation: As new services and applications are connected, do you create a new segmentation framework or adapt to what you already have? As you adapt your cloud network, this patchwork security can't keep up with modern cyber threats.
The financial implications are also significant. A poorly designed cloud network can lead to wasted resources and unpredictable egress costs, especially with increasing cross-cloud connectivity. Managing these costs across multiple clouds, each with unique complexities, can quickly become overwhelming.
MTTR and Network Operation Challenges
Research by Splunk highlights the critical financial impact of these issues. It reveals that downtime costs large enterprises an average of $200 million annually, cutting 9% of yearly profits.
As organizations migrate their systems and applications to the cloud, the traditional network infrastructure, once considered the backbone of operations, becomes more complex and fragmented. This loss of flow visibility between networks and apps in clouds creates a significant roadblock in the troubleshooting process, resulting in longer MTTR and increased downtime. Furthermore, using multiple cloud providers and services can also lead to cross-cloud complications. Cloud providers have unique technologies and protocols, making it difficult for traditional network operations to manage and troubleshoot issues across these diverse environments.
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Embracing an enterprise cloud network is not just about improving operations – it’s a strategic move toward maximizing the return on your cloud investment. It enables your business to operate at a cloud scale, ensuring you extract the full value from your cloud initiatives.
Discover how Prosimo delivers Vodafone's vision for a unified cloud network architecture that enhances speed, consistency, and time to market for its business units. Join our session to learn more!