Our CEO and CTO, Nelson Nahum, was asked to contribute his advice to companies hesitant to make a move to the cloud, providing tips that address common misconceptions or allow a successful implementation, for the ClickSoftware blog.
His answer below (full article here)
Nelson Nahum, Co-Founder CEO, Zadara Storage
Advice for Companies Moving to the Cloud and Common Misconceptions and Tips:
1. Leverage the cloud model – try before you buy
One of the biggest advantages of the cloud is its model – you can try it without any commitment. The only initial commitment is the time (and sometimes fee) spent on the trial to do testing. To that extent, it is far easier, simpler and quicker to try the cloud than trying out any new device or software that needs to deployed on premise. It can be deployed immediately and instantly, and with no obligation.
2. Test your real workloads
My next recommendation is to try serious workloads. Maybe it’s your next project that should already be deployed in the cloud. Very often, it’s hard to see the whole picture if all you do for testing is deploy a couple of VMs. Begin by deploying a real application; it forces the team to think about the size of the VMs, the networking and the storage needed, and paints a clear picture of all elements: from price, through technical challenges and how to leverage cloud elasticity and agility.
3. Test at various cloud providers
Another important aspect, is to decide which cloud provider best serves your current needs and unique requirements. Selecting the cloud provider, may require at first to deploy in 2 or 3 cloud providers in order to compare their cloud features, support and prices.
4. Don’t delay
Finally, I would say that if you are hesitant, the sooner you start trying using the cloud, the better. The cloud is, and will continue to expand as, a competitive advantage. And at the end of the day, you will need to work with a combination of public and private clouds in order to take advantage of the “as a service” business model and the agility that the cloud provides. The sooner you learn how to best use this tool and platfrom, the sooner you will reap its rewards.
Nelson Nahum, Co-Founder CEO, Zadara Storage Nelson brings over 20 years of experience in the storage industry in multiple storage software development positions. He is known for creating innovative products and successfully bringing them to the market. Prior to co-founding Zadara Storage, he was a Fellow and Vice President of Software Engineering at LSI Corporation, where he was responsible for an engineering team of over 250 people. Previously he was CTO and co-founder of StoreAge Networking Technologies, which was acquired by LSI in 2006. At StoreAge, he invented the out of band storage virtualization system, building and leading the engineering to a successful product that was adopted by HP and lead to the acquisition of StoreAge by LSI. Nelson holds multiple patents related to storage systems. Nelson has a B.Sc EE from the Technion, the Israeli Institute of Technology.
