Can I ask a Stupid Question?

“Can I ask a stupid question?” Do you know how many times I have heard that in my over 30 years in the business? Ninety-Nine out of One Hundred times, the question is anything but stupid. Most recently this tends to come up in a follow-on call with a potential customer either hours or days after we have had our primary discussion on cloud migrations.

Once we have gotten through the discussion and analysis of:

The question will come up: “This may be a stupid question, but how do I connect to the cloud?” The question is anything but stupid and is often a critical component of the overall cost that needs to be taken into account. While we are all used to working from home and connecting over the public internet to get to our O365 data and SaaS applications, connecting from an enterprise is a very different animal. One of our Cloud Architect’s, Larry Green, lays out the options this way:

Both metered and unlimited connections are available where you are allotted a certain number of GB per month and pay more per GB if you exceed the allocation, similar to a mobile phone plan. These services can be purchased from a traditional circuit provider such as AT&T or Verizon, many of the large Data Center providers, and even some specialty companies which may bundle in encryption and other services.

Each of these options have their pros and cons. Astadia will work with you to determine the best case for your particular environment. Sometimes it is as simple as taking advantage of existing contract obligations with a service provider. Other times, there is clearly a correct way to go based on technical benefits.

The takeaway here is that it is very important to take into account the network charges that a cloud provider will get you for. While most inbound traffic to AWS and Azure are included, charges for outbound traffic can add up very quickly and need to be taken into account!

Don’t be afraid to ask that question. It is definitely NOT a stupid one!!