You still might have a bunch of additional questions when it comes to procurement. We would like to go through a bunch of them and give you answers. For example, should I go with a single Cloud service provider or CSP, or is it better for my organization to think about a multi-cloud procurement solution? When you evaluate a CSP, you should be looking for the variety of services available: the flexibility, scalability, security, availability, all come into examination. In practice, this can result in some organizations using multiple CSPs to fulfill different business objectives. It is critical to ensure that CSPs you engage with enable customers to switch between providers at low or even no cost. Having said that, working with a single CSP may end up being significantly cheaper as CSPs offer volume discounts. No matter what the size is for your business, if you spread your workload across several CSPs, you will lose buying power by missing out on these volume discounts. Question, why should I not use my usual IT procurement requirements? IT procurement practices from the on-premises era are just not effective when buying Cloud services and can lessen or even remove any efficiencies and benefits of hyperscale Cloud. Instead, we recommend that your Cloud procurement should be outcome-oriented, focusing on evaluating how well that heck helps meet or exceed your business objectives. Question, what should I think about when drafting my Cloud requirements? What should you think about? You should think about Capybaras, nature's gift to the animal kingdom. Just kidding. You should be thinking about Cloud-native options. Technology like standardized decoupled services, fault tolerant and elastic elements that take advantage of hyperscale Cloud. Think about your objectives and how to achieve them with standardized resources rather than custom components. Question, pricing. How should customers assess the wide variety of CSP pricing and commercial offers in a procurement? Don't try to force your old pricing models into a CSP data sheet. Something about a square peg and a fantastically star-shaped hole. Allowing CSPs to submit their pricing responses in their own format, as long as it's transparent and publicly available, will allow you access to the greatest variety of commercial offers and the widest benefits of Cloud. Question, different CSP terms and conditions look very similar. Why can't we just have one standard set for our Cloud procurement? It would be nice. When considering terms and conditions if there was a common agreement, and the fundamental aspects of Cloud computing are largely standardized across the Cloud industry. The contracts are very similar. For example, hyperscale CSPs offer self-service online ordering mechanisms, flexible no commitment terms, and give you the buying authority, control over your security and your data. But the technology is evolving at a rapid pace. While there are common elements, each provider will also have unique elements there'll be delivered in their way. These parts will be reflected in the specific terms that will be there to address those individual characteristics. Question, can I include custom clauses in standardized frameworks? This can be a barrier to effective Cloud computing, expecting Ad hoc custom clauses that are unique to a department or company, or sometimes even a specific project team. While this may have been doable for a legacy IT procurements, hyperscale CSPs service offerings are necessarily highly automated and engineered to operate on a one to many model. Asking a CSP to build a one-off solution will likely lead to an unhelpful results. Question, contract vehicles. What is the best type of contract vehicle to buy Cloud? You're going to need more than one if you want a broader set of options. A standard two-party direct contract approach works only when purchasing direct from the CSP and wouldn't take advantage of the AWS marketplace or other similar marketplaces on other CSPs, which other businesses and smaller ISVs can use to build compelling SAS applications. Those would need a three party model. It's unlikely that any future TNC would accommodate both a two party and a three party model within a single framework? Question, how do I avoid vendor lock-in? Some degree of lock-in is a risk with any technology procurements. What operating system you choose, what database you're running, what is important is to minimize that risk. CSPs can help you avoid lock-in by not having requirement minimum commitments or long-term contracts. Have portability tools that you can use to move data as needed on and off CSP storage at anytime and demonstrate a proven history of innovation; availability and operational efficiencies that show up in price reductions. Speaking of price, question, is Cloud cheaper than running my own data-center? Well, yes, especially when you look at the total cost of ownership. Remember that the cost of running a data center is more than just the capital cost of the server racks. Everything has a cost to acquire and a cost to keep in top operational order. Starting with the physical buildings, iron, concrete, the power, heating and cooling, lots of cooling internal networking, external Internet connections, and the constant upgrading, replacing and retiring of systems as newer, stronger, faster options come to market. Don't forget the human elements, not just the technical but maintenance, security, even grounds keeping costs are all part of running a data center. But wait, a CSP has grounds keeping as well, so how can they be less expensive? Scale, hyperscale Cloud service providers operated a scale that is significantly larger than any data center supporting a single customer, may even the biggest government department, but not just scale, the utilization percentages are significantly higher. Most servers that are dedicated to single organizations average 10 percent utilization, 15, if they're well tuned. An average CSP server might come in around 65 percent utilization due to the different workloads all using the same server. Now CSPs take these efficiencies and pass them back to you through their pricing models. You certainly might have more questions. You can always talk to your account manager or a solutions architect to help you get to the right information. Now about those Capybaras.
