In a recent conversation with Data#3, strategy and innovation leader Scott Bales highlighted how adoption of cloud is among the key catalysts for digital transformation. Cloud services, such as Microsoft Azure, allow businesses to seamlessly integrate a number of different products and services, which in turn enables the creation of new, improved customer experiences. Making the jump to the cloud also offers considerable benefits for your organisation’s IT department, such as keeping operating systems patched, and addressing the challenges that come with software end-of-support. This is especially pertinent for those using Windows and SQL Server 2012, which will stop receiving support from Microsoft from July 2022.
Utilising cloud technologies in your IT ecosystem lays the perfect foundation for positive change within your organisation. In fact, one of the best ways that cloud services can make the life of your IT department easier is through helping to manage governance and compliance requirements. Microsoft Azure maintains about 100 industry and compliance standards across the globe. Mark Anderson – Microsoft’s National Security Officer for Australia, who was featured in conversation with Scott Bales at the same Data#3 event – outlined that Microsoft manages about 2500 regulatory changes per week. Each of these changes may also come with a required engineering update or legal commitment. As a cloud provider, Microsoft takes care of meeting these changing requirements for you by continuously updating their cloud infrastructure, uplifting the compliance baseline.
If you’re currently embracing the power of the cloud or are using a service that is approaching end-of-life, such as Windows and SQL Server 2012, can you comfortably say your organisation is able to keep up with this rate of change? Can you manage your compliance requirements and successfully defend against threats while continuing to focus on helping your organisation to do what it does best?
If your answer is no, we’d like you to meet the shared responsibility model for cloud.
The shared responsibility model breaks down what cloud providers like Microsoft are responsible for, and what you as the end customer are responsible for, when it comes to your IT ecosystem. The below diagram outlines responsibilities across the use of SaaS, PaaS and IaaS services on the cloud, compared to customer managed on-premises datacentres:
Even with a simple hosting of your current servers on the cloud as part of a lift-and-shift migration, you immediately gain the management benefits that come with cloud’s underpinning infrastructure. If you decide to take your modernisation journey a step further and migrate your PaaS and SaaS services to the cloud, a lot of the responsibility for managing and patching your operating systems and networking applications shifts to Microsoft. Together, this lets you worry less about keeping your IT ecosystem up-to-date and focus more on providing the highest value to your business.
As organisations like yours continue to consider how the cloud can benefit them, understanding the shared responsibility model is critical in helping decision makers appreciate the value of cloud services. There is a great opportunity through migration and modernisation to the cloud to lower your management risk and exposure, as well as simplify many of the compliance requirements that may be required in your industry.
We mentioned it before, but SQL Server 2012 is officially reaching end-of-life in July 2022, meaning that continuing to use it without Microsoft’s support could result in increased security risks and ballooning costs. Windows Server 2012 will also be end-of-life in October 2023. This end of an era could be the perfect chance to embrace the modernisation process and gain all the benefits that come with shifting to cloud.
And it’s never been easier to get started. All you have to do is fill out the form below and a member of the Data#3 team will be in touch to help you determine the best approach for you.