How to Make the Most of Your Cloud Migration

May 9, 2023

Cloud computing is critical for companies to access their data and business applications from anywhere, anytime. By migrating IT infrastructure to the cloud, companies and their employees can enjoy several benefits, like flexibility, scalability, efficiency, and increased security.

Having the ability to quickly adapt to changing market conditions by increasing or decreasing their computing resources as needed has made cloud-based desktops like Azure Virtual Desktops, Citrix DaaS, and VMWare Horizon popular among IT departments.

However, it’s still common for many IT teams to lack adequate visibility into the short- and long-term costs associated with configuring and maintaining a cloud-based environment.

How Does Migrating to the Cloud Impact Performance and Cost?

A migration gone wrong can be a pit of expenses, making the adage ring true: fail to plan, plan to pay.

To avoid costly mistakes, organizations look to Login Enterprise to help their IT teams navigate the complex world of cloud vendors by providing a consistent benchmark for virtual and physical desktop solutions.

With this benchmark, IT can easily compare and validate the price and performance of each vendor’s solution without running the risk of jumping in blindly.

To showcase the power of leveraging a tool like Login Enterprise before migrating, we want to share an example of a team who recently planned a cloud migration and the benefits they received from being proactive.

Moving Critical Applications to the Cloud

Despite its numerous benefits, the cost is a significant concern in cloud computing, as an incorrect configuration can lead to substantial expenses.

Recently, a Fortune 500 healthcare company sought Login Enterprise to help them with a business initiative to pilot and migrate to cloud infrastructure.

At the beginning of the project, the organization’s virtual EUC environments spanned different workspace types, with half of their user population running on Citrix and the other half running on other workspace platforms.

Additionally, the IT team had to maintain high availability of a business-critical application to ensure uninterrupted access for their end-users.

The business requested IT to move a portion of its infrastructure services to Amazon Web Services (AWS) and move another sizable portion of its user population to persistent and dedicated workspaces in Azure, leveraging Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) infrastructure. The team also considered moving some of their on-premises server infrastructure to the Google Compute Platform.

How Much Does Cloud Migration Cost?

The primary goal during this migration was to keep costs low and preserve user experience while moving workloads to the cloud. To make this happened, the organization’s IT team leveraged Login Enterprise,

“To better aid us in achieving this goal, the Virtual Cloud Engineering team performed capacity planning using Login Enterprise with Amazon EC2 instance types to determine the best fit for our Citrix workloads. After analyzing our results for over 17 AWS EC2 instance types, we decided that we could implement the M5 Double Extra Large (M5 2XL) instance type with an increase in user density of 75% over the M4 Double Extra Large (M4 2XL), who ran our current workload.

Based on our environment, this increased density and slightly lower hourly run costs equate to savings of over 40% for one month in AWS. Login Enterprise enabled our team to mimic our Citrix desktop workload and better identify the AWS EC2 instance type that best suited our performance and cost requirements”, said the Engineer in IT Client Systems.

Access to the concrete data was a crucial differentiator in identifying the ideal cost-to-performance ratio for their new cloud environment before deploying. During this process, the IT team made wiser financial choices for their organization, in turn creating a lasting foundation for an efficient, cost-effective cloud-desktop environment.

Balancing Cost and User Experience in Cloud-Based Environments

Balancing user cost and experience is particularly important in cloud-based environments. In cloud computing, the cost of infrastructure and resources can quickly add up, making it essential to optimize usage from the beginning and continue monitoring as needs change to minimize expenses and the risk of performance degradation.

Balancing both factors require careful consideration of cloud resource usage, pricing models, and service-level agreements. By leveraging Login Enterprise, IT can make the best decisions regarding cloud services, monitor usage patterns, and optimize resource allocation to deliver a high-quality user experience while keeping costs under control now and in the future.

Want to learn more about this story? Read on about this organization’s journey and more here!