Leveraging Cloud Expertise and Consultancy for the UK | SUSE Communities

Leveraging Cloud Expertise and Consultancy for the UK

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SUSE’s Matt Eckersall Elected for techUK’s Cloud Leadership Committee

With the election of Matt Eckersall to techUK’s “Cloud Leadership Committee”, a seasoned leader and senior executive with experience across proprietary and opensource vendors, he is now part of the group of experts providing strategic direction for the industry organization’s Cloud Computing work program. The Cloud Leadership Committee currently has 29 members, made up from leading vendors such as Atos, Google, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Salesforce, SAP and VMware.

While more and more companies are investing in converting their traditional IT structure to a cloud-based solution, they often discover how difficult it is to navigate the move to the cloud due to the complexity of applications and workloads.

Matt Eckersall points out that business leaders must consider the pros and cons of different cloud options and providers and how a well-designed Cloud Roadmap needs to incorporate decisions on standards, culture, new businesses process as much as product choices.

The data move to the cloud needs to be well prepared

“Every company should consider creating a Cloud Roadmap from the very beginning. It serves as a continuous plan for those responsible and for the entire team to facilitate and optimize the migration of enterprise data into the cloud.

  • In order not to overlook any essential steps, stakeholders should be involved from the very beginning of the mapping process. Each provide relevant information such as insights into internal operations, current and desired end-user experiences, workloads and applications.
  • It is important to analyse which workloads and applications should be moved to the cloud and therefore be included in the roadmap. Gartner’s 5 R’s (“Rehost, Refactor, Revise, Rebuild and Replace”) can provide orientation. In addition, help is available via SUSE’s partner ecosystem consisting of system integrators and expert partners, bringing Opensource innovation to company strategy.
  • Throughout this mapping process, the views of internal stakeholders and end users should be continuously incorporated – as they are the ones who will use the system. Key stakeholders within the company – technical, business and executive – Should all be key contributors.

Ultimately, the cloud will be the infrastructure platform for business that provides the flexibility for scaling and innovating on a continuous basis.

A Cloud Roadmap that is regularly reviewed and optimized will ensure that the company can react quickly to market trends and changes.

More and more companies are looking for ways to reduce their dependence on a specific cloud provider, or put another way, avoid long term vendor lock-in. Cloud users are asking for more flexibility to move their data and applications across a hybrid landscape. While the trend towards large public cloud providers seems to be unbroken, it is worth looking at local or regional providers to complete the cloud roadmap across all workloads.

In the UK and Ireland, companies are increasingly turning to local providers due to data protection regulation and the growing importance of digital sovereignty.

Flexibility, scalability and no vendor-lock-in: this is where SUSE can show all its strength. We define ourselves on what our customer’s needs are and focus on customers’ requirements. As the largest independent open source vendor, open for us at SUSE means more than software. It is our business model and our culture. We deliver truly open source solutions without any enforced vendor lock-in, combined with exceptional service and support for our customers.

We can be certain: there is no single cloud computing strategy for all customers. However, independent open source vendors like SUSE can help you be confident in what it takes to success in a multi-cloud, multi-vendor world for your company. Individually planned and expertly executed, the cloud becomes a valuable and effective tool for any business.”

 

Matt Eckersall is Regional Director EMEA North, Sub-Sahara & South Africa at SUSE

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Andrew Steggles Global Alliance Marketing A senior marketing professional with 30+ years experience of Product, Partner and Field marketing for technology brands.