More and more agencies are turning to the cloud to handle mission-critical workloads. However, with a plethora of cloud service providers (CSPs) offering varying degrees of services, the decision of which platform to choose can be very stressful. To mitigate the stress, agencies should focus on three key decision factors when migrating to the cloud: cost management, performance, and security.

1. Cost Management

The initial costs of moving to the cloud may seem straightforward, but hidden charges, like egress charges, can add up quickly. Egress charges are costs for taking data out of a public cloud, when it needs to be used by an application, or using it in another active environment. Another hidden cost to be aware of is that compute services prices don’t “autoscale.” Agencies need to scale up or down at different times, so it is hard to initially estimate costs. Agencies are poised to choose the “right” CSP when they truly understand their workloads noted Oracle’s Clarke Colombo, Sales Consulting, Director. “It’s important to know exactly what makes up the application, along with its dependencies, he shared. “If you don’t take time to do this first, you can run into unanticipated costs.”

2. Performance

 Issues pertaining to latency are intolerable for agencies striving to deliver on the mission. To overcome latency issues, agencies need to understand service level agreements and capabilities of the platforms, such as speed. Moreover, agencies should know what to expect from the service and what happens if it is not delivered on. In addition to speed, it’s important to consider predictable performance so the platform will run as expected.

3. Security

Ensuring the security of data in the cloud is one of the most important considerations when choosing a CSP. While more and more agencies are acknowledging the benefits of migrating to the cloud from on-prem systems, they are also seeing the value in compliant and FedRAMP-authorized solutions. FedRAMP authorization offers assurance that the platform is security compliant. Agencies need to understand who is responsible for data security and to be equipped with a standardized approach to security assessment, authorization, and continuous monitoring for their cloud solution.

“Things have changed when it comes to cloud migration and choosing a CSP,” explained Colombo. “There is no need to be locked into a cloud provider, pay more than you have to, or deal with substandard performance because there are so many possibilities today.”

Agencies should look to partner with providers that have a proven cloud migration strategy which addresses issues of cost, availability, and security clearly with an understanding of the needs of public sector organizations.

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