The Right Time for Cloud Ops: When Businesses Should Start Considering a Move to AWS

Cloud Ops encompasses a set of procedures that help monitor everything happening within cloud services, like Amazon Web Services. It ensures that all processes are functioning correctly, technologies are utilized to their full potential, and data remains completely secure.

During the process of digital transformation, many companies grapple with the question of transitioning to cloud solutions, including AWS. You can read more about them here. They promise easy scalability, flexibility, and cost savings. But what triggers should prompt such consideration?

Data Volume Growth. Imagine a startup creating an online flight booking or property rental application. As its popularity grows month by month, the number of users of this tool increases, as does the volume of data stored and used.

If a database hosted on an on-premises server starts slowing down due to the massive volume of information, it can adversely affect the user experience. In such cases, moving to AWS RDS or other cloud solutions that offer consistently fast performance becomes justified.

Need for Rapid Scalability. A hypothetical online store selling handmade goods might experience a surge in popularity during Christmas or other holidays. Local servers might not be able to handle the sudden increase in load.

In such situations, AWS EC2 can be used, allowing for flexible resource allocation precisely when needed. This is especially relevant when a company doesn't have a consistently high load but may encounter peak periods, as described above.

Reducing Equipment and Maintenance Costs. Imagine a company is a small publishing house needing to store electronic versions of books and regularly backup other vital business data.

Purchasing and maintaining proprietary servers for these tasks might be too expensive for a small business. In this scenario, it makes sense to switch to AWS S3, which would efficiently store data and significantly cut regular expenses associated with this task.

Enhancing Security and Reliability. For a startup offering financial services to clients, security and data confidentiality inevitably become paramount. Ensuring these at a local level might be too complex and costly.

Instead of relying on in-house solutions, one can transition to AWS services: IAM helps manage access to information, and Shield provides protection against DDoS attacks, which are typically orchestrated by competitors or malicious actors seeking unjustified compensation to halt their attacks.

Some believe that starting to use AWS and other cloud services is only prudent after a business grows to a certain size. However, in reality, the scale of the company is just one of many triggers.

Embracing Cloud Ops is becoming increasingly relevant for even small businesses undergoing digital transformation. Cloud services offer flexibility and easy scalability. Moreover, they often become a crucial way to save costs and a key success factor for businesses.