Rackspace Landing

It’s no doubt that cloud computing has changed IT. The cloud reduces capital expenditure and more importantly it reduces total cost of ownership. The cloud is more flexible, scalable, allows for data backup, and it makes you more business agile. The cloud has created new business models – including new divisions within established businesses, and the cloud allows better use of resources, and offers built-in disaster recovery. The benefits of the cloud are staggering as businesses seek daily to migrate onto to the two mass scale public cloud providers Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure.

However, increasingly businesses are finding out that the public cloud isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be. In order to move to the cloud, you have to change the way that you do IT, and that means you need to hire new highly skilled and in demand staff.

According to a recent article in Forbes, referencing a Global Knowledge certification study, the AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate leads all IT certifications commanding a salary over $125,000. The article went on that the most valuable IT certification skills involve creating apps on AWS and managing costs. AWS Certified Solutions Architects are required to have expertise in AWS cost analysis, demonstrating the ability to orchestrate AWS- advanced cost management and control features. This certification also covers ingress and egress of data to and from AWS.

Recently, one CIO, speaking in confidence, expressed his frustration that he is not receiving the cost benefits of his cloud project since he discovered he needs to hire three new highly paid staff. His budget projections are way off and he has to go back to his CFO and CEO and explain that while they had to move to the cloud, it’s not the same cost benefits that he originally promised them. Unfortunately, this CIO is not alone. “When you go public cloud, you have to staff accordingly, or else you’ll get stuck in a slow and painful transition.”

Not only will you not get your promised cost reduction, since you have to hire the highly skilled and in demand people but it’s equally difficult to retain them once they’re hired. In fact, while it’s very hard to recruit and hire AWS and Azure Architects and Admin but it’s even harder to keep them aboard. Again, another CIO claimed, “Recruiters are calling them weekly. It’s just a matter of time until they get a better offer and they’re off to the next job, leaving us stuck in the middle of a project.”

Enter the new Gartner Group category: Managed Cloud. Instead of hiring and worrying about retaining your new staff, you can just choose a third party managed service provider that specializes in delivering on the promises of cloud.

Spearhead was very impressed with Rackspace, a leader in managed cloud in both AWS and Azure and other several other applications including Oracle and Magento. Rackspace is leading the way in today’s market to help customers migrate to the cloud and help them with the ongoing management, including customers who previously went to the public cloud and tried to manage it themselves. Please download the Rackspace white paper on managed cloud and if you’d like to learn more about managed cloud and how Spearhead can help, contact us and let’s talk.