Top cloud management challenges  

• Limited visibility and control: Manging workloads across different cloud platforms often leads to fragmented oversight, making it difficult to monitor performance, security and resource utilisation.  
• Unoptimised costs: Without a unified cost management approach, organisations risk overspending due to underutilised resources or misaligned configurations.  
• Security and compliance inconsistencies: Each cloud provider has unique security measures and compliance policies making it challenging to uphold consistency across platforms.  
• Interoperability challenges: Integrating and orchestrating workloads between cloud environments can be complex, leading to inefficiencies.  

To overcome these difficulties, organisations must take a strategic approach, leveraging automation, centralised management tools and cross-functional collaboration to streamline operations and enhance security. 

Recommendations for overcoming cloud management complexities

Successfully managing multiple cloud environments requires a proactive and strategic approach. Below are recommendations to address the common challenges. 

• Identify clear objectives: Establish a well-defined cloud strategy with measurable goals to ensure alignment with business needs and long-term success. 
• Foster cross-functional collaboration: Encourage IT, finance, security, and compliance teams to work together, ensuring cloud initiatives align with operational, financial and regulatory priorities. 
• Prioritise security and compliance: Embed security best practices from the start, implementing standardised policies and proactive risk management across all cloud environments. 
• Continuously optimise: Regularly assess cloud usage, cost efficiency, and performance to refine strategies, eliminate inefficiencies, and maximise value. 

How to future-proof your cloud management strategy

A resilient cloud management approach requires adaptability and continuous improvement.  

• Invest in scalable tools: Select a cloud management platform (CMP) that seamlessly supports multicloud and hybrid environments, providing flexibility as business needs evolve.  
• Embrace automation wisely: Leverage automation to streamline repetitive tasks and improve efficiency while maintaining human oversight for strategic decision-making. 
• Monitor trends: Continuously monitor emerging technologies, best practices and industry developments to ensure cloud strategies remain relevant and competitive. 
• Prioritise training: Equip teams with the latest cloud skills and knowledge to maximise efficiency, security and innovation. 

Measuring the success of cloud management strategies

To evaluate the effectiveness of a cloud management strategy, businesses should focus on the following metrics: 

• Cost savings: Measure reductions in cloud spend over time and compare against budgeted forecasts. 
• Resource utilisation: Track how effectively cloud resources are used, minimising waste while maintaining performance. 
• Performance: Monitor application uptime, response times, and user satisfaction to ensure optimal service delivery.  
• Security incidents: Evaluate the number of security threats detected, mitigated, and prevented to gauge risk management effectiveness. 
• Automation impact: Assess the percentage of routine tasks automated and the resulting time and resource savings. 

While managing multiple cloud environments comes with challenges, the right approach can transform cloud obstacles into opportunities. By leveraging a Cloud Management Platform (CMP), strategic automation and internal training, organisations can streamline the complexities of cloud management.  

Cloud management platform (CMP) overview

A cloud management platform is a centralised hub, enabling IT teams to efficiently manage, monitor, automate and optimise public, private or hybrid cloud infrastructures. As cloud strategies become increasingly complex, companies turn to CMPs to bridge the gap between diverse platforms and unify cloud environments into a single, cohesive platform.  

Benefits of using a cloud management platform

A well-implemented CMP offers more than simplified cloud operations — it enhances efficiency, controls cloud costs, strengthens security and improves performance. Key benefits of CMPs include:

Cost optimisation

Reducing costs doesn’t mean cutting corners on performance. Instead, it’s about making data-driven decisions to maximise efficiency without sacrificing performance. A CMP provides actionable insights to decrease wasteful spending by assisting with the following:

• Identifies unused or underutilised resources to rebalance and consolidate workloads accordingly   
• Easily forecast and scale up or down as demand changes 

Performance enhancements

Real-time monitoring ensures workloads run efficiently, helping avoid bottlenecks and reduce downtime. 

Automate operations

Routine tasks such as provisioning, scaling and workload balancing can be automated, allowing IT teams to focus on strategic initiatives. 

Enhance scalability

CMPs are designed to grow and adapt to business demands, making them a future-proof solution for evolving cloud strategies. 

Strengthen security and compliance

Effective cloud management is pivotal in mitigating security risks and ensuring compliance in today’s threat landscape. CMPs provide built-in governance frameworks and automated policy enforcement to uphold compliance standards and regulations.  

• Centralises security controls by enforcing consistent policies across all cloud environments
• Simplifies compliance audits with automated reporting and governance, including GDPR, ISO 27001 or SOC2.  
• Provides real-time alerts with advanced monitoring tools to detect anomalies or potential breaches before they escalate.

Cloud technologies and infrastructure will continue to evolve, and so will their complexities. A cloud management platform is essential for businesses looking to gain visibility and streamline processes for future agility.  

Alfa has delivered its industry-leading platform, Alfa Systems to the global asset and automotive finance industry since 1990. The world’s largest automotive and equipment finance companies rely on the Alfa Systems platform to create an end-to-end solution with workflow automation, multicountry functionality and more. 

Evaluating alternatives to support and modernise IBM infrastructure

Due to earlier versions of Alfa Systems being built on IBM infrastructure, the company utilised OEM software support and Service Express for Data Centre Maintenance to ensure the hardware remained up and running. To eliminate complexities and streamline support, Alfa consolidated its IBM i and other hardware maintenance to Service Express.

As the Alfa Systems platform evolved and customers migrated to newer versions developed on Amazon Web Services (AWS), the company began to evaluate what was next for its legacy hardware. While IBM equipment is known for its longevity and reliability, the team was interested in exploring other long-term solutions outside of on-premises. In addition, the Alfa team faced roadblocks finding IT talent with unique IBM i skill sets. The time spent supporting the equipment internally also contributed to the decision to explore alternatives. 

Leveraging a fully managed solution to redirect time and resources

The Alfa and Service Express teams worked together to outline a plan to consolidate the company’s IBM workloads to Service Express’ Specialty Cloud for IBM Power solution. Moving to Specialty Cloud meant Alfa would migrate its on-prem hardware to Service Express’ private single-point cloud solution. In turn, reducing the time, resources and IBM i talent needed to support the infrastructure in-house. 

Throughout the project, Alfa had direct access to Service Express’ Technical Team to address any updates or changes. Service Express continues to operate as an extension of Alfa’s team by providing hands-on support for the company’s fully managed cloud solution. 

Glen Dimplex offers innovative solutions ranging from consumer appliances to industrial heating, ventilation and cooling units. Headquartered in Dublin, Ireland, the company operates in nearly 20 countries across Europe, North America, Australia and Asia. 

After hosting and supporting systems in-house for over 25 years, the company determined it was time to evaluate its IT strategy and approach. Glen Dimplex initially partnered with Service Express for third-party Data Centre Maintenance. Service Express’ knowledge and experience with mission-critical IBM systems influenced the company’s decision. 

Taking the next step toward innovation

After experiencing Service Express’ flexibility and service quality, Glen Dimplex began to evaluate the next steps toward modernising its critical ERP and legacy IBM systems. Service Express and Glen Dimplex worked together to identify a plan to improve resiliency and meet the company’s commercial and operational requirements. 

The next step included migrating Glen Dimplex’s high availability (HA) pairs for several business units into Service Express’ UK-based Tier III and IV by design data centre and colocation facilities. Glen Dimplex received technical support at every step of the migration into Service Express’ availability zones. The shift to Managed Colocation laid the foundation for the journey to Service Express’ fully managed Specialty Cloud for IBM Power solution. 

“The hosting approach meant we avoided €450k of capital expenditure required to replace ageing on-premises hardware. Operating costs also decreased due to a reduction in local IT overheads plus the economies of scale you expect with cloud.” 

– Jonathan Webb, IT Director, Glen Dimplex 

Investing in transformation

Service Express staff and engineers carefully planned and executed the cloud migration from start to finish to mitigate risk and ensure business continuity. Glen Dimplex’s IT staff has redirected time and resources spent updating and managing systems to other business priorities without sacrificing peace of mind. Service Express engineers managed the infrastructure around the clock to maintain resiliency and optimum performance. 

“With the ever-changing cultural landscape and our commitment to sustainability, Service Express has the solutions and team to help us achieve our goals. The support has been first class pre- and post-implementation.” 

– Phil Grundy, Head of Business Systems, Glen Dimplex 

The company looks forward to modernising its IT estate and experiencing the benefits of Service Express’ fully managed and secure solution. This will allow its teams to focus on serving customers and growth opportunities. 

What is multicloud?

Multicloud architectures include two or more public cloud services, usually from different cloud providers. These deployments connect services across environments without physically connecting the clouds. The main objective of implementing multicloud is to give businesses the flexibility to leverage the most suitable computing environment for each of their workloads. 

Software as a Service (SaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IasS) all fall into the multicloud category. Most companies use these products daily, including Microsoft 365, Salesforce, AWS, etc. 

Benefits of multicloud

Cloud providers all have their own advantages and disadvantages; a multicloud solution allows you to use best-in-class services for each app or task. Partnering with multiple providers can help businesses avoid vendor lock-in and reduce expenses by opting for more affordable options. 

If your business is thinking about switching to cloud computing, multicloud offers an easy and efficient setup process and can also help you:

• Minimise spending by exploring pricing options between providers
• Scale on demand to fit your organisation’s growing needs 
• Reduce downtime by routing computing between clouds

What is hybrid cloud?

Both multicloud and hybrid cloud integrate more than one cloud service, but they differ in several ways. Whereas multicloud systems only use public cloud services, hybrid cloud environments combine elements of public cloud with either a private cloud or on-premises infrastructure, enabling data and application sharing between them. 

Another key difference between multicloud and hybrid cloud is architecture. Those with hybrid cloud solutions own and manage a private cloud as part of their infrastructure, usually hosted on-premises or on dedicated servers within a third-party data centre. They sync their private cloud with their public cloud workloads to create a single solution. 

Benefits of hybrid cloud

Some organisations prefer to have their infrastructure solely onsite and don’t want to host it elsewhere. A hybrid cloud solution lets you have infrastructure in one location while using a public cloud provider to get the best parts of both worlds. It’s ideal for businesses looking to optimise their resources and manage costs. 

Hybrid cloud allows organisations to transition to cloud computing gradually, as well as:

• Freedom to manage tasks across private or public clouds
• Public cloud scalability combined with private infrastructure security
• The ability to manage high-demand and fluctuating workloads efficiently

What is specialty cloud?

Specialty cloud solutions involve a cloud provider specialising in a particular area, industry or application. If you consider Microsoft 356, Salesforce and IBM Power, they each have a specific use case. Specialty cloud providers can create custom solutions to increase scalability and flexibility around business-critical applications. 

Specialty Cloud for IBM Power is one example. Since some workloads and applications don’t fit most public cloud architectures, it can be challenging for companies to adopt cloud solutions. This specialty cloud solution is built on IBM Power to integrate with mission-critical applications without rearchitecting workloads. 

Benefits of specialty cloud

If a company doesn’t want to host their architecture on-premises, it can entrust a managed service provider to run its entire IT infrastructure stack in a specialty cloud environment. This requires total trust and transparency between the business and the managed service provider.

Specialty cloud also allows you to:

• Benefit from cloud solutions without rearchitecting
• Integrate technologies and tailor your environment to your needs
• Protect sensitive data that isn’t safe in a shared environment

What are most companies using for their infrastructure?

Today, a vast mix of companies use multi and hybrid cloud. Nearly every business is using a public cloud provider of some type. For example, Microsoft requires cloud access for Office 365 products. Most enterprises or large companies still have their IT footprint and haven’t fully migrated to the cloud. While specialty cloud is a fairly new cloud computing platform, it has gained momentum over the last few years. 

Which solution is the best fit for your business?

Multi, hybrid and specialty cloud all create easy access to cloud computing. However, when choosing a cloud model for your workload or migrating your data to a new cloud, compare the pros and cons across cloud strategies to find the best fit for your specific business needs. 

Improved uptime and productivity

By migrating systems to Service Express, Forterra has observed several improvements.

• Increase in availability and system performance speeds
• Simplified system administration
• Strengthened productivity with new MPLS network connection

Looking ahead to the future

Service Express currently monitors and maintains Forterra’s suite of data centre and MPLS services and over 125 of the company’s VMs. Forterra’s team is pleased with the process from start to finish, and they look forward to additional projects in the future.

An award-winning seamless migration

The migration of the customer business units took place over the course of around ten weekends, with global visibility for the client at the highest levels. There were no functional changes to how the Movex environment operated, with integrations such as CUMPAS, EDI and 3PL performing as usual.

Service Express met with the staff to take a deep dive assessment to fully understand their system requirements including applications, integrations, current performance and future growth. Using a backup from each LPAR, the workloads we restored into the Service Express Specialty Cloud, connectivity, application and performance benchmark testing were performed and approved prior to each LPAR going live in the cloud. A final refresh of data was performed to ensure there was minimal disruption to the online availability of the customer’s systems.

The employees were certainly impressed that the move was implemented without a hitch.

In recognition of this trouble-free transition, Service Express was awarded ‘Best Supplier Innovations Indirect Sourcing,’ which they were very proud to receive. An outcome that they certainly hadn’t expected, they were just so pleased that the solution and migration exceeded customer expectations.

Result Highlights:

• Entire customer estate migrated into the cloud on time, as agreed
• 24/7×365 service desk – essential to meet operations spanning many time zones around the globe
• Proof of concept available to test all aspects of the non-production LPARs prior to migrating the production LPARs into the cloud as signoff
• Fully hosted managed service performed daily
• Award-winning seamless migration
• Substantial saving of $2.4 million in operational costs

A move made with the confidence of capabilities

Through the extensive hosting capabilities of Service Express, there are 16 partitions now in the cloud, each dedicated to operations in territories like Australia, Europe, China and Singapore. Another two environments are scheduled to be set up to expand the cloud-based footprint and to establish more cost savings through the reduction of on-premise hardware.

Also under consideration for the future is a project to migrate mainframe hardware into the cloud. Service Express already has a strong reputation on maintenance for this type of server and has placed many mainframes into the cloud with the same ease and support applied to mid-range transitions.

Thanks to the expertise of Service Express, $2.4 million in operational savings has been achieved through establishing cloud-based hosting for the engine developer’s AS/400 Movex environment.

In recognition of this outstanding work, Service Express were honoured to receive the ‘Best Supplier Innovations Indirect Sourcing Award’ from the customer.

A fintech company needs a specialty cloud solution that is secure, allowing for data protection and application availability 

In the marketplace, there are limited options to take IT infrastructure into the cloud if you deal with banking and wealth management transactions. 

In the UK, many data centres are classified as Tier 2 and 3, but these are inadequate for financial requirements. Service Express offers a Specialty Cloud for IBM Power solution hosted in our Tier IV Design data centre to fulfil vital requirements for data protection and application availability. 

Service Express’ Specialty Cloud allowed Fintech customer to expand financial and payment solutions to their end users  

Several key differentials provided Service Express with advantages that attracted the customer: 

• Backing from regulatory bodies – the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and European Banking Authority (EBA) 
• A strong skill set in IBM i specialisation 
• Reduced supply chain risk as we fully own our data centre 
• Approval from the company’s Risk and Compliance team  
• PCI-DSS Level 1 certification, the highest level of security for businesses that store, transmit, or process credit card data 
• All data centre staff are employed by Service Express 

We have been highly acclaimed by this client for our quick responses and strong levels of support, which remained high even during the COVID-19 pandemic, thanks to our collaborative approaches. 

It is clear Specialty Cloud for IBM Power delivers many advantages for those in the finance industry, including the Fintech specialist customer, who will be utilising Service Express’s IBM i and domain expertise to expand service offerings to their end users. 

Making data centres more energy efficient 

The world’s data centres currently consume about 1% of the global electricity supply, so it’s crucial that our industry invests in technology that maximises data centre energy efficiency. This is where IBM’s Power10 comes in. It uses IBM’s first 7nm processor, providing three times greater energy efficiency than its predecessor.  

“IBM Power10 is enabling Service Express to re-think our product portfolio, ensuring sustainability underpins all our offerings”, says Darren Smith, Head of Product & Innovation at Service Express Europe. “Leveraging IBM’s hybrid cloud platform will not only enable our clients to accelerate their digital transformations securely, it will also support their efforts to meet ambitious energy efficiency goals and reduce their carbon footprints.” 

Service Express’ giant leap towards a more sustainable future 

The powerful new capabilities of our new specialty cloud offering and its scalability-focused design offers competitive advantages for environmentally-minded organisations. Just six IBM Power10 servers can perform the role of 32 servers from the preceding generations. Out of those six, only four need to be allocated as production environments. This leads to a number of benefits that help clients address their sustainability goals, such as: 

• Using up to eight times less energy 
• Fewer requirements for cooling 
• Reducing their carbon footprint eight-fold 
• Less hardware to produce 
• Fewer cables to maintain and replace 

All in all, this represents a giant leap in innovation for Service Express. Not only does the solution help lower our carbon footprint while increasing technical performance, but it also readies the business to exploit new sustainable technologies of the future. 

Reinforcing Service Express’ sustainability commitments 

With the Power10 server line introduced to Service Express’ world-class data centres, it complements the company’s existing credentials for environmental responsibility. 

Thanks to Service Express’ efforts to establish one of Europe’s greenest data centres, the company is approved for the Climate Change Agreement (CCA) scheme by the UK Government’s Environment Agency. This symbolises a recognition of our efforts to reduce energy use and carbon dioxide emissions. All energy used in our primary data centre comes from renewable sources and Service Express’s Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) rating is 1.14, surpassing the common industry standard of 1.6. 

IBM is also committed to its own sustainability and environmental responsibility and has pledged to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. 

The collaboration makes sense for Service Express and will help us uphold our environmental reputation and further protect the critical resources we depend on. 

If your organisation is interested in fulfilling its green agenda, feel free to get in touch with Service Express to learn more about their eco-friendly capabilities. As an industry-leading data centre solutions provider, the company specialises in global multivendor maintenance, specialty cloud, managed infrastructure services, hardware solutions and more.