Editors Note: As of January 2022, iland is now 11:11 Systems, a managed infrastructure solutions provider at the forefront of cloud, connectivity, and security. As a legacy iland.com blog post, this article likely contains information that is no longer relevant. For the most up-to-date product information and resourced, or if you have further questions, please refer to the 11:11 Systems Success Center or contact us directly.
When most people think about the cloud, they initially think of reducing costs and shortening their time to market. More experienced buyers layer on other criteria, such as performance, security, compliance, workload segmentation, and integration of the cloud into their existing environment. The shape of your global cloud footprint, however, is an equally important consideration. Below are ten reasons why having a homogenous global cloud footprint at your disposal matters:
1. Data sovereignty, privacy laws, and local regulations are real. They can put a halt to your business in many regions if not properly adhered to. Choosing a cloud provider with a strong global footprint not only gives you the ability to comply with local regulations in the countries where you do business but also allows you to manage your cloud footprint from a global level, which is more efficient and cost-effective.
2. You should be close to your end users. You want the right to choose where your apps are delivered and where the data is stored. Whether its about performance, latency issues, data privacy, or data sharing, as you move more and more of your own IT footprint into the cloud, you will want a provider who gives you the flexibility to decide where that footprint lives. These are decisions that should be based on the business, not dictated by your service provider.
3. Maintaining a single global contract cuts out complications. For many multinational businesses, completing contract negotiations in each country in which they do business can be a daunting task, which can bring projects to a standstill. Look for a cloud provider that can deliver an overarching global contract so you only have to go through this process once. Further, having a larger contract globally gives you more clout, and allows you to negotiate better pricing, and gives you the ability to standardize costs globally. This is very helpful if you are rolling out customer-facing products and applications in which you need to present simple chargeback or pricing options.
4. A standard, global SLA (service level agreement) allos you to offer that same SLA to your end users. No two cloud providers ever seem to offer the same SLA, so being able to easily define agreements across the regions where you do business, can help improve your service and management of your own SLAs.
5. A standardized IT service catalog gives you the ability to build out your catalog, group your application templates, and distribute them globally with little effort
6. The single pane of glass management interface greatly simplifies your IT operations and deployment methodologies. Think of things like your alerting, IT Service catalog, reporting, analytics, and support. How do those feed back into your own IT department?
7. You can find standardized support with ITIL. Look for a standardized onboarding and support levels that compliment your own environment.
8. Facilitate your path towards a global cloud strategy. Many multinational companies are still endeavoring to formulate a global cloud strategy. Evaluating and eventually selecting a global cloud provider can greatly facilitate this process and provide a framework for your global IT organization to streamline and standardize operations.
9. Compliance cannot be ignored. Compliance is another key imperative that if not properly handled can delay or stall key business activities. You need a cloud service provider that is thinking about global compliance issues and enables you to deal with that in a standard way across all of the regions where you do business.
10. Innovation can happen anywhere. As modern enterprises increasingly rely on innovation to drive new market demand, their IT departments must be at the ready to support these activities wherever they occur. The cloud takes away the need for large up-front investments in hardware and provides companies the ability to spin up “start-up” environments whenever and wherever. Think of it as your global laboratory; that lab can be moved or replicated at any time, giving optimal flexibility to the innovative projects in your business.
At 11:11 Systems, we are always querying our multi-national customers to understand the challenges that they face with their IT infrastructure. Our goal is to provide the tools and simplicity they need. We have developed a strong, global cloud footprint that consists of eight data centers in the North America, Europe, and Asia-Pacific regions. The expansion into these data centers has been driven primarily by customer needs. Low-cost resources are not enough to lead a successful migration to the cloud. This process takes a cloud service provider that can keep up with your business and help you streamline your processes in all of the places you do business.
