Determining the Value of Applications to Your Business

We are continuing to lay the proper groundwork for determining a meaningful cost comparison between the cloud and your On Premise resources. We last discussed finding your current infrastructure costs and how to determine your applications’ true resource requirements: Finding Your Current Cost and the Pitfalls That Inhibit You from Finding It. Moving forward, let’s determine the business value of your applications. In order to determine this, many questions must be asked. Most importantly, it’s the people who are answering these questions that will create a true picture of each application’s value. These answers are not solely given by IT but are found with the business owners or units that require the application.  We’ve been amazed by the number of IT Managers/Directors that can’t tell which apps are mission critical and even which line of business is the most critical. Today, both business drivers and IT need to be on the same page. They need to think of the big picture and work towards the business goals together.

With the business goals in mind, ask: Which applications are most crucial to your business? More than likely, each manager, business unit, leader, etc. is going to say that their application is most important. But, if you can get candid answers by asking detailed and direct questions, finding a hierarchy and application interdependencies can be determined. Here is a short list of questions that should be answered:

 

  • Who or What depends on the application
  • How many customers/users are there
  • How often is the application used - are there peak times/ valleys
  • Are there minimum performance requirements
  • How long is the historical data required to be available -days, weeks, years?
  • After a DR event, how quickly does the app need to be back up and running OR what is your Recovery Time Objective (RTO)? - This answer should be driven by business goals
  • Are there governance requirements for the application’s data
  • Which applications have a direct relation to creating revenue
  • Can you quantify downtime by dollars and cents

 

By doing your due diligence with each application, the answer to “Which applications are most crucial to the business?” will most likely present itself without the white noise of management arguing in the background that one is more important than the other. Yes, this could be a big project to tackle and it could take a sufficient amount of time. You would be doing a great disservice to the business however, if you didn’t dig to find these answers. How can you see any advantage in the cloud or On Prem if you don’t know the true value your applications give to the business?

Bottom line: Take the time and Do. Your. Homework.

Now that we’ve shown how to define your business and technical requirements, it’s finally time to look at the cost comparison between the cloud vs. being On Prem and the advantages of the cloud pricing model. If you have missed any of our blog posts, check them out at our Net3 Blog . If you are interested in learning more about N3T Technology and how we can successfully migrate you to the cloud, call 1-864-990-0112 to talk with one of our cloud experts.

Categorized: cloudcomputing, RTO