Defining ‘value’ with cloud architecture

During the pandemic, I started learning how to rebuild and repair bicycles since there was a cycle shortage and buying new was limited and costly. With gyms closed, I began to fix bikes for friends and family to get them back on the road as well. 

Bike components are a good model for the concept of value. You can pay $50 to $1,000 for a bike wheel (if full carbon). The question is, what is the best value of that component based on your needs? How do you find the true best value?

Value is one of those words that means many things. However, in the terms of cloud computing architecture we can define it like this:

Value is the balance between money spent and the relative benefit we get for spending that money.

In cloud architecture, spending too little or too much is likely not the optimized choice. You need to find a place between the two extremes to optimize the configured cloud solutions and balance the costs with the core benefits that come back to the business.

Figure 1 provides a good visional depiction of this. Note that the blue cost line goes up and to the right, representing an increasing amount of money spent on cloud components, such as databases, security, governance, platforms, storage, etc. The other line depicts the benefits to the business, which rise as the cost goes up until about the center of the chart, then they taper off. 

Copyright © 2021 IDG Communications, Inc.

Source link