EDITOR ’ S QUESTION
JAVIER BARRETO CORTES , CLOUD
PRODUCT MANAGER IFX NETWORKS
CIOs can reduce hidden costs in the cloud by defining their actual usage needs and finding a cloud provider that fits those needs . As a good partner we should not charge everything on a per-click basis . Instead , we should provide essential elements of connectivity , availability , performance , and data backup at a predictable or fixed cost .
As for methodologies , processes and tools to measure costs and their impact in the cloud , almost all clouds have resource consumption tools to establish expenses . We should base the best method on service availability , which ultimately guarantees that the company can continue billing and remain competitive .
It is also relevant to compare , for example , what organization pays for cloud services versus the impact generated by lack of availability or service outages .
It is critical to improve or optimize other business areas ’ use of cloud resources .
We must constantly monitor the maximum consumption or ‘ peaks ’ of technological loads concerning what the organization acquires . We must adjust cloud resources to what we use .
There is always doubt about which cloud expenses are a priority and which should be controlled or even charged by the IT department to improve the use of cloud environments . We should always associate the emphasis on cost with the company ’ s BIA ( Business Impact Analysis ) since we must give greater availability and performance to the systems that support the business ’ s mission-critical and highimpact economic processes .
Similarly , we should be very austere in the resources for other types of loads .
IFX Networks recommends always costing servers based on 730 hours of uptime to avoid surprises in billing . It is imperative to clearly understand the provider ’ s inbound and outbound connectivity costs and the connection medium to the respective cloud .
Budgeting the price of information backup is essential , assuming a retention period that makes sense for Business Continuity or legal compliance .
In our case , you can acquire Infrastructure-as-a- Service ( IaaS ) from IFX Cloud , where we provide a product with zero hidden costs based on fixed connectivity costs both inbound and outbound , daily information backup with a retention period of 30 days , free platform monitoring ( CPU , RAM , disk ), endpoint security included through Sophos Antivirus , secure network management with IDS / IPS / geolocation , SSL VPN and free IPS consoles for virtual servers ( bastion ), standard All-Flash storage and 99.9 % availability .
34 INTELLIGENTCIO LATAM www . intelligentcio . com