Episode Summary

iland Director of Cloud Market Intelligence Brian Knudtson is joined by guests Mark Crawford, Juliana Ramos, and David Klee for a conversation on the concerns customers have about moving to an operating expenses model. They discuss what to expect when shifting from a CapEx to an OpEx model, the fine-print gotchas that should concern customers, and the application-specific ramifications to lookout for. Get your CFO, this is an episode for the whole team.

Panel

Cloud Conversations

Topic 1

[03:01] Marc, you’ve been through a cloud transformation as a customer. What were the benefits your company was looking to get out of moving to a more operations-focused expense model?

Topic 2

[09:46] What kind of gotchas should customers be properly concerned about when they’re paying per use, and how can they better control those gotchas?

Topic 3

[17:53] Moving to an OpEx model can be about more than consumption of compute and storage. Are there any application-specific ramifications customers should be on the lookout for?

Cloud Bites

[1:21] “When you shift from a CapEx to an OpEx model, things dramatically change on not just the IT side, but the financial side with the CFO.” — David Klee 

[03:34] “Their initial benefits of moving to the cloud was they wanted to reduce costs of maintaining a physical data center.” — Mark Crawford 

[05:24] “You have to have your operational team aligned with the business objectives.” — Juliana Ramos 

[08:33] “It keeps your financial forecast stable and predictable and you can keep your IT efforts as OpEx as possible so you can move to the cloud with security and predictability and you can do this shift more easily.” — Juliana Ramos

[12:07] “Size it appropriately and then you get a performance gain. As a result, your licensing goes down.” — David Klee 

[13:38] “You’ve got to understand your business and understand its goals from now to like five years from now, because you have to know where your business is going and how the cloud can help you get there.” — Juliana Ramos

[14:22] “Don’t just buy cloud for its price. If you want a good service, good service has a price.” — Juliana Ramos

[14:50] “We are constantly talking about the future and what we can do to save money.” — Mark Crawford

[20:59] “You need to have the discussion up front because the financial model may actually dictate what platform you’re comfortable going to or can even afford.” — David Klee

[23:32] “Some are based on consumption, some are charged by what you allocate and not necessarily consume.” — David Klee