The modern world runs in the cloud. In business, a cloud environment needs to be up to the task or the risk of falling behind is very real. How would you know if your cloud environment is getting things done? By benchmarking it. When you benchmark cloud performance, you are measuring your ability to use a cloud environment to maximum advantage.
We look at cloud benchmarking from two angles: cloud provider and customer. Providers need to know that their infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) offerings remain competitive with the biggest names in cloud computing. Customers need to know they are getting the value they are paying for. Without benchmarking, neither party has the full picture.
Cloud Benchmarking Takes Many Forms
As with any kind of benchmarking, cloud benchmarking takes many forms. You measure and evaluate the metrics pertinent to your cloud goals. Here are just three examples:
1. Comparing Cloud Providers
Cloud benchmarking compares the performance of a variety of providers. A provider needs to compare its cloud services against competitors like Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud Platform so it knows how well it is doing by comparison if it expects to compete in the marketplace.
Likewise, IaaS customers want to make sure their cloud providers are performing as expected. Comparing different providers offers customers a baseline for evaluating services and the value they represent.
2. Cost Optimization
Companies put a tremendous amount of financial resources into their cloud environments. They need to know whether those resources are being optimized. Cloud benchmarking can provide the information. For example, benchmarking can reveal whether a company is over-provisioning its resources or not. Knowing that information could lead to significant savings through reduced cloud spending.
3. Monitoring Long-term Performance
Yet another avenue for cloud benchmarking is monitoring a company's long-term performance in the cloud environment. Benchmarking can reveal potential issues that could impact everything from workloads to application security.
Performance benchmarking is all about maintaining consistency in the cloud. By continually monitoring the most important metrics, companies can know that they are maximizing cloud potential across the entire ecosystem.
A Must for Modern Business
Any organization making use of the cloud should want to guarantee that productivity and efficiency remain high while security is maintained. As such, benchmarking is a must for modern business. Cloud benchmarking services should always be in the budget.
The benefits of cloud benchmarking should be obvious. In addition to maintaining productivity and cloud security, benchmarking improves decision-making. Armed with the right information and a better understanding of cloud performance, organizations are fully equipped to make informed decisions about cloud strategies.
Cloud benchmarking is also a cost-saving tool. Cloud computing is necessary to keep up with modern business, but organizations do not have to overspend on it. Benchmarking reveals where and how money is being spent. Organizations can get a better handle on cloud spend to keep costs in check.
Let Us Talk About Your Needs
You expect the cloud to deliver. Your organization needs its cloud resources to perform at peak, avoiding bottlenecks and streamlining workloads. And you need all of this while maintaining a strict budget. It is time for cloud benchmarking.
You can rely on ISG for sound benchmarking advice and solutions. Cloud benchmarking is something we take very seriously. Let us work together to measure and evaluate your cloud environments, applications and workloads. Together we can maintain maximum productivity while guaranteeing you are not paying too much. Contact us to learn more.
