One of the most crucial success indicators in the application of any organizational cloud solution is, of course, the ROI. No business owner wants to be faced with an unhealthy transition that costs more money than it actually saves. In general, there are four major performance objectives that should be achieved with the switch to the cloud:
- Reliability of processes should improve
- Agility should accelerate
- Compliance should increase
- Data privacy should improve
While compliance and data privacy are both important objectives, reliability and agility are the objectives that have the most impact on your ROI. Fortunately, there are steps you can take to accurately measure each of these areas, and better predict your business' ROI after the migration to Microsoft cloud products.
Reliability
One of the most common concerns for organizations migrating to the cloud is how application will function in a new computing environment. Two key performance indicators for reliability are:
Monitored applications percentage - Are business application monitoring procedures efficient? In other words, is your organization monitoring all applications to check for inconsistencies or issues?
SLA adherent apps - You likely received a service level agreement setting performance goals over time (or should create one). How many applications are included in the SLA?
Agility
Agility really comes down to speed - how long does it take your customers/staff to access your website or other documents?
Node positioning - How long is the process for provisioning a node? Can your cloud delivery solution be optimized to decrease this time?
Application deployment - Should you launch a new application, how long does it take for the application to be publicly available? Can it be automated effectively?
New products and services - How quickly can your organization release new products or services? Do they appear instantly on your website through the CMS?
Compliance and Privacy
Especially if your organization regularly serves government employees or handles sensitive information, it's crucial to make sure that your cloud solution is compliant to government and departmental standards. Fortunately, Microsoft cloud products come with metrics that can help you determine just how secure your information is.
Encrypted traffic - What percentage of traffic arrives non-encrypted? Is this percentage acceptable based on your privacy goals?
Managed devices - Can you increase the percentage of devices that are managed to achieve higher compliance standards?
To get a true picture of the ROI potential inherent in the cloud, it's best to deploy a complete approach combining financial and technical performance metrics. How much time is the cloud saving employees? Can this time be funneled into other more profitable tasks? Most metrics will improve gradually over time, making it absolutely crucial that you leverage tools available in the cloud to help you measure cloud performance quickly and easily.
