Universities are some of the most prolific users of cloud amongst public sector organisations. But could they be in for 'bill shock'? Here's how to avoid it.
Recent research has revealed that universities are some of the most prolific users of cloud amongst public sector organizations. As the digital transformation drive continues to impact all sectors, many research and education (R&E) organizations are moving to the cloud for services as varied as staff and student email, research collaboration with international partners and to deliver online and distance learning courses.
As cloud uptake becomes more widespread, many R&E CIOs are now looking to optimize their investments. Cloud optimization is the ongoing process of achieving greater control of the cloud environment after adoption by reducing unplanned spend, maintaining performance and safeguarding security. Given the amount of data that R&E organizations handle, and their diverse pool of users – including students, employees, and third-party partners – optimization is particularly important.
A key aspect of cloud optimization is managing consumption, which left unmonitored, can result in a nasty ‘bill shock’. Indeed, a recent survey found that bill shock is a monthly occurrence for many CIOs across all sectors. This can be even more pronounced when R&E institutions are using cloud services with a pay-as-you-go model – public cloud providers like Microsoft, Amazon, Google, IBM and others offer. CIOs will make an estimate for budget planning purposes of how much cloud they expect to consume, but get these estimates wrong, and those budgets can be quickly negated.
This means that for many, the expected return on cloud investment is dramatically reduced – hence the need to optimize. What CIOs in R&E organizations need is deep, real-time visibility into the entire cloud estate, which removes any guesswork over cloud and gives them the ability to closely monitor and accurately predict consumption. SoftwareOne offers a range of managed services to help R&E organizations optimize successfully.
Azure is a popular platform in the R&E sector because it offers a secure global network of cloud services to support collaboration, DevOps, and large-scale research programs. Managed Services for Azure helps R&E CIOs maximize investments by offering dashboard and reporting tools, and workload assessments, to help manage costs and optimize spend. These features allow R&E CIOs to improve the accuracy of their usage predictions and ensure cloud expenditure stays within budget. There’s no doubt that cloud offers huge benefits to R&E organizations, but to ensure it delivers real value, post-adoption optimization is essential.
SoftwareOne is part of a highly selective program of Microsoft to create a high impact as Managed Services Provider (MSP) offer for Azure partners.
SoftwareOne is part of a highly selective program of Microsoft to create a high impact as Managed Services Provider (MSP) offer for Azure partners.
