Cost and performance optimization for uncertain times

Business turbulence comes in all forms. As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, we continue to face multiple forms of turbulence concurrently — cultural, economic, environmental and industrial. IT systems are being asked to do more than ever to support a constantly changing and unpredictable environment. Regardless of whether you need to scale up or down, IT infrastructure should be built to respond to load changes and business conditions while maintaining optimal performance and cost efficiency.

During this time of uncertainty, businesses of all sorts are being impacted, both positively and negatively, in unexpected ways. Some businesses are experiencing massive traffic spikes as millions work, shop and entertain at home, while others need to quickly dial down resources to match reduced traffic due to ongoing closures or business slowdowns. Even local and federal government systems are seeing legacy gear overtaxed by extraordinary upturns in usage. The root causes of these failures under pressure are often due to traditional IT, siloed proprietary applications, outdated processes and resource-intensive operations.

Common IT infrastructure challenges

Though conditions may change, properly architected and optimized infrastructure lets businesses better adapt to unforeseeable usage patterns. When trying to get the most out of your IT infrastructure, businesses often face one, or all, of these challenges:

Performance at scale

Maintaining high-performing applications at any scale requires infrastructure designed to be elastic and responsive. Unfortunately, you’ll only know that it’s a problem when it’s a problem — slow response times, degraded user experience, system crashes and other technology fails. For example, during a traffic spike your web application can’t keep up with the volume, diminishing customer experience and stalling operations. Testing, monitoring and tuning help you maintain the same experience from your cloud or web-based applications, regardless of changes in traffic.

Cost optimization and governance

Gartner estimates that most businesses are overspending on cloud by 70%. Quickly adjusting to meet growing or shrinking demand can spur overspending on unused or underutilized cloud resources — and you won’t feel the pain until the bill arrives. There is a solution: design your cloud infrastructure to only use needed resources. To be confident that you aren’t overspending, incorporate notifications to alert you to unusual usage spikes and to provide analytics that can be used to adjust your spend. 

Lack of expertise

Professionals with the skills to keep your environment tuned and running efficiently can be scarce and expensive. During calmer times, you have the time to find the right team to help you take advantage of optimization and modernization opportunities to improve performance and cost. In times of trouble, having the right expertise on hand may be more difficult to find, but is even more necessary in enabling you to respond faster and reduce the impact to the business.    

Meet uncertainty with solutions for certainty

As these uncertain times continue, it’s more important than ever to rely on IT strategies and solutions that are certain and proven to ensure business continuity and customer experience. Your strategy should be able to address disruption in the short term and adapt to turbulence in the long term.

To help you get there, we’ve combined our deep expertise and strong technology partnerships into a Cost & Performance Optimization service. This service helps you maintain business continuity in a changing economic landscape and better prepare for the future. Services include:

• Access to the expertise you need to achieve scalable, cost-efficient infrastructure
• Assessment of your current environment to ensure your infrastructure is designed to scale responsively with changes in demand
• Expert recommendations on the best-fit platform for optimal application performance at your chosen price point
• Customizable cloud management services
• Deep insights into cloud spend and guidance on cutting costs