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Shunmuga Sundara Perumal T.

Chennai, India

$40/hr
4.9
7 jobs

I’m an AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional with multiple AWS specialty certifications and hands-on experience designing scalable, secure cloud architectures. I help businesses migrate applications to AWS, improve infrastructure reliability, and implement DevOps best practices. My AWS Certifications: • AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional • AWS Certified Security – Specialty • AWS Certified Advanced Networking – Specialty • AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate • AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner I can help with: • Cloud migration to AWS • High-availability architecture design • DevOps automation and CI/CD pipelines • Infrastructure security and networking • Application deployment and monitoring I also teach AWS concepts on my YouTube channel(Learn Tech), helping engineers understand real-world AWS architecture and best practices.

  • Cloud Architecture
  • Cloud Development
  • AWS CloudFormation
  • AWS Development
  • Solution Architecture
  • AWS CloudTrail
  • Cloud Migration
  • Security Infrastructure
  • CI/CD
  • AWS Lambda
  • AWS Glue
  • AWS CloudFront
  • AWS Application
  • AWS Amplify
  • AWS Server Migration
  • Amazon EC2
  • Amazon S3
  • AWS CodeDeploy
Saqib A.

Falls Church, Virginia

$65/hr
5.0
12 jobs

Most cloud environments don't fail because of bad intentions they fail because reliability, security, and delivery were never engineered together from the start. Over 13 years I have designed and operated cloud platforms for organizations where downtime, misconfigurations, and compliance gaps carry real consequences Bank of America, Fiserv, and the Federal Reserve Board. That experience shaped how I think about every engagement: architecture first, automation always, reliability non-negotiable. Here is where I add measurable value: Cloud Migration & Architecture: Designing resilient, cost-optimized multi-cloud environments across AWS and Azure, built for scale and aligned with business objectives from day one. CI/CD & DevOps Automation: Implementing Terraform, Ansible, Kubernetes, and pipeline automation that standardizes delivery, eliminates manual bottlenecks, and reduces deployment risk significantly. SRE & Observability: Building monitoring, alerting, and incident response frameworks using Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog, and ELK that give engineering teams real visibility, not just dashboards. Security & Compliance: Hardening infrastructure against real threats while maintaining PCI-DSS, SOX, and ISO 27001 alignment across regulated and high-growth environments. Whether you are a scaling startup needing a solid foundation or an enterprise team modernizing legacy infrastructure, I bring senior architecture thinking with hands-on execution no handoffs, no gaps. Certifications: AWS Solutions Architect | RHCE | CCNA | CompTIA A+, N+, S+ Open to a quick call to review your current setup and identify exactly where I can add value.

  • Amazon Web Services
  • Microsoft Azure
  • Kubernetes
  • DevOps
  • Terraform
  • CI/CD
  • Docker
  • Cloud Architecture
  • Cloud Security
  • Infrastructure as Code
  • Ansible
  • Python
  • Linux
  • Google Cloud Platform
  • Solution Architecture
  • Amazon EC2
  • Azure DevOps
  • System Administration
  • Security Engineering
  • Grafana
Wendy B.

Fountain Hills, Arizona

$80/hr
4.9
198 jobs

Expert Salesforce/ Snowflake / Data Cloud /CRM Consultants. Successfully working with Apex Coding, S.S.O, OAuth Flows, SOAP API, REST API, Triggers & Controllers, SOQL (Salesforce Object Query Language), Salesforce site & WSDL, Data Loader, Visual Force Pages, Live Agent, Process Builder, Big Objects, Lightning Component, Salesforce Marketing Cloud. • Salesforce.com Certified Administrator (ADM 201). • Salesforce.com Certified Platform App Builder • Salesforce.com Certified Advance Administrator (ADM 211). • Salesforce.com Certified Sales Cloud Consultant. • Salesforce.com Certified Service Cloud Consultant. • Salesforce.com Certified Platform Developer I • Salesforce.com Certified Platform Developer II Highlights - Converted Javascript Button code from SF Classic to Lightning Component. - Salesforce Classic to Lightning Migration - Development of Lightning Component/Lightning Web Component - Implementation using Salesforce DX Salesforce Nonprofit Starter pack - Volunteers for Salesforce Sales Cloud Implementation - Custom Territory Management Solution with Collaborative Forecasting (Without enabling Customizable Forecasting) - Proposal Management System with Conga Composer and DocuSign package. - Account/Opportunity/Lead/Contact/Campaign Management System Service Cloud Implementation - OpenCTI - Live Agent - Service Cloud Implementation in Service Cloud Console - Entitlement Management - Contract Management - Knowledge Article Setup Marketing Cloud Implementation - Lists vs Data Extensions - Data Retention - Subscriber Key - Unsubscribe Context (Pub List vs Lists) - SendLogs - Automation Studio - Automation Studio Detail SFMC Activities - Sends and Queries - SFMC Contact Builder - Journeys - Journey Builder and Interactions - Marketing Cloud Lightning (MC Connect) – Sales and Service Cloud Integration - Dynamic Content Options - VAWP - AMPScript Commerce Cloud Implementation -Front-end designing -Back-end architecture with expertise in HTML, ISML, CSS, SCSS/SASS, Demandware, jQuery, javascript, AJAX, JSON, Gulp.js, XML etc. Salesforce Integration with - - Google Drive/Calendar using Service Account (Rest API) - Quickbook Desktop Integration using DBSYNCH - Quickbook Online Integration (Rest API) - Routify - AWS S3 integration for large/small files - Salesforce Einstein - Content Management Websites like Box.com, Dropbox.com, Alfresco. - Payment Gateways like Authorize.net, Paysimple API, Stripe, Paypal and Moneris - Social networking websites like Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin. - Wordpress Websites - DocuSign and Conga Composer Packages - PHP, Java, .net,Joomla based websites (SOAP API) - MySQL using Middle ware - Chatter File/Attachment/Content version Integration for Partner Community User (SOAP API). Developed Salesforce.com Appexchange Apps - - Docufy, Cyber Alarm Antivirus and snapi.io etc. Community Cloud Implementation (Lightning) - Developed highly customized Customer/Partner Communities Miscellaneous - Field Service Lightning App - Salesforce CPQ implementation - Financial Force Package Customization. Pardot Implementation - Integrate pardot with the Salesforce. - Create Dynamic Lists, Automation Rules, Segmentation Rules, Drip Campaigns, Email Templates(Mobile Responsive) - Building responsive landing pages using Form and Form handlers. - Building and styling multistep forms - Engagement Studio - Code tracking - Integrated Form for Contact/registration/Sign up etc. - Design and code an editable email newsletter or emailer that will work on all email clients. - Provide the newsletter design according to your brand and theme. Wordpress - Plugin Development - Theme Development - Convert PSD to HTML files - Yoast Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Full Stack - Javascript - .net - Php - Ruby & Rail - Python - React Mobile App Development - iOS/Android Native Mobile App and integrated with Salesforce. - Swift, HTML 5 (bootstrap theme), Angular 6, Laravel, MySQL - React Native - Cross Platform app using Node.js

  • Salesforce Lightning
  • Salesforce Marketing Cloud
  • Commerce Cloud
  • Salesforce CPQ
  • Tableau
  • Salesforce App Development
  • AI Chatbot
  • Data Cloud
  • Machine Learning
  • Mulesoft
  • Stripe
  • Salesforce Sales Cloud
  • Salesforce CRM
  • Salesforce Einstein
  • Salesforce Service Cloud
  • API Integration
  • Nonprofit
  • Apex
  • AI Consulting
  • Intuit QuickBooks
Himanshu V.

Gurgaon, India

$60/hr
5.0
10 jobs

Expert-Vetted | AWS/GCP/Azure DevOps | AIOps | Kubernetes | Terraform Himanshu Vaish Top 1% Upwork EXPERT-VETTED | Cloud & DevOps Architect | AWS | Azure | GCP | Kubernetes | Terraform With over 13 years of IT experience and multi-cloud certifications across AWS, Azure, and GCP, I help organizations design, secure, and automate their cloud infrastructure. As an Upwork Expert-Vetted Professional with a 100% Job Success Score and Top Rated Plus status, I rank among the Top 1% of freelancers on the platform. I specialize in cloud-native architecture, enterprise DevOps, and Kubernetes automation—enabling businesses to reduce operational overhead by up to 40%, improve scalability, and meet stringent security and compliance standards in regulated environments like fintech, healthcare, and SaaS. Recent Client Impact: Migrated 50+ enterprise applications to multi-cloud environments with zero downtime Reduced infrastructure costs by 35-45% through FinOps optimization and rightsizing Automated CI/CD pipelines for development teams of 100+ engineers Achieved PCI-DSS and FedRAMP compliance for Fortune 500 clients Core Offerings Cloud Architecture & Migration (AWS, Azure, GCP) – Multi-cloud strategy, landing zones, and lift-and-shift modernization Cloud Security & Compliance (CSPM, PCI-DSS, FedRAMP, HIPAA, CIS Benchmarks, Zero Trust) Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, CloudFormation, Azure ARM/Bicep, AWS CDK, Pulumi) Kubernetes & GitOps (EKS, AKS, GKE, Argo CD, Flux, Helm, Service Mesh) Platform Engineering – Internal developer platforms, self-service infrastructure, golden paths AI/ML Infrastructure (SageMaker, Azure ML, Vertex AI, MLOps pipelines) Serverless & Event-Driven Architecture (AWS Lambda, Azure Functions, GCP Cloud Functions, EventBridge) CI/CD Pipeline Engineering (GitHub Actions, Jenkins, GitLab CI, CodePipeline, CircleCI) FinOps & Cost Optimization – Cloud financial management, tagging strategies, reserved instances, savings plans Contact Center Solutions (Amazon Connect, Lex, Real-time Analytics, Omnichannel routing) Hybrid Cloud & Network Design – VPN, Direct Connect, ExpressRoute, Cloud Interconnect Application Modernization – Containerization, microservices refactoring, legacy system migration Observability & SRE – Full-stack monitoring, incident response, chaos engineering Technical Proficiencies Cloud & Infrastructure: AWS (Control Tower, Organizations, IAM Identity Center, GuardDuty), Azure (Landing Zones, Entra ID, Defender), GCP (Organization Policy, Cloud Identity), VPC, Transit Gateway, PrivateLink Infrastructure Automation: Terraform (modular, reusable architecture), AWS CloudFormation, Azure Bicep, AWS CDK, Pulumi, Ansible, Git, AWS Systems Manager, Azure Automation DevOps & CI/CD: GitHub Actions, Jenkins, GitLab CI, AWS CodePipeline, Argo CD, Flux, Helm, Docker, Podman, Kubernetes (EKS, AKS, GKE), Istio, Kustomize Monitoring & Observability: CloudWatch, Azure Monitor, Datadog, New Relic, Prometheus, Grafana, ELK/EFK Stack, AWS Security Hub, Splunk, OpenTelemetry Serverless & APIs: AWS Lambda, Azure Functions, GCP Cloud Functions, API Gateway, Step Functions, EventBridge, Azure Logic Apps, Cloud Run Security & Compliance: AWS Config, Azure Policy, GCP Security Command Center, Wiz, Prisma Cloud, Snyk, HashiCorp Vault, Secrets Manager, KMS Databases & Storage: RDS, Aurora, DynamoDB, CosmosDB, Cloud SQL, S3, Azure Blob, GCS, Redis, ElastiCache Certifications ✓ AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional & Associate ✓ AWS Certified Machine Learning – Specialty ✓ Microsoft Certified: Azure Solutions Architect Expert ✓ Google Professional Cloud Architect ✓ ITIL v3 Certified ✓ Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) (Optional - add if applicable) Industries Served FinTech & Banking – PCI-DSS compliance, real-time transaction processing, fraud detection infrastructure Healthcare & Life Sciences – HIPAA-compliant architectures, PHI data security, telemedicine platforms SaaS & Technology – Multi-tenant platforms, API-first design, rapid scaling for product launches E-commerce & Retail – High-availability systems, payment processing, inventory management automation Value to Clients ✓ Automation-First Approach – Infrastructure as code, GitOps workflows, self-healing systems ✓ Enterprise-Grade Documentation – Architecture diagrams, runbooks, disaster recovery plans ✓ Post-Deployment Support – 30-day knowledge transfer, on-call support options available ✓ Security & Compliance First – NDA-compliant, SOC 2 experience, security best practices ✓ Cost-Effective Solutions – Right-sized infrastructure, reserved capacity planning, waste elimination ✓ Agile & Transparent Delivery – Sprint-based milestones, daily updates, Slack/Teams integration Why Work With Me? I don't just deploy infrastructure—I architect scalable, secure, and cost-optimized solutions that align with your business goals. Whether you're a startup building your first cloud environment or an enterprise modernizing lega

  • Generative AI
  • CI/CD
  • Infrastructure as Code
  • Kubernetes
  • Amazon Web Services
  • Microsoft Azure
  • Google Cloud Platform
  • DevOps
  • Terraform
  • Cloud Engineering
  • Security Engineering
  • Amazon Bedrock
  • Vertex AI
  • LangChain
Dawid G.

Dover, Delaware

$99/hr
5.0
52 jobs

If your AWS bill keeps climbing, production breaks under load, or a compliance deadline is getting close - the problem is rarely just AWS. It’s the architecture. I step into fragile systems and fix both: cloud infrastructure, and the application design running on it. Because even perfect AWS setup cannot save software that wasn’t designed to scale, isolate failures, or handle real production traffic. Most teams I work with are stuck in one of these situations: - AWS costs rising every month with no clear reason - Systems that pass tests but fail under real traffic - Compliance pressure from regulators or auditors - Constant firefighting instead of controlled releases Hiring more engineers or adding more monitoring increases complexity. I simplify the architecture - both infrastructure and code-level design - so the problems stop repeating. Recent outcomes: - Avoided a $5M federal penalty by delivering a critical federal platform before deadline, focusing only on what was required for compliant launch - Cut hosting costs from $96K to $14K per year by eliminating architectural waste across infrastructure and services - Designed and delivered a FedNow-ready, Federal Reserve-compliant real-time payments system scaling to 60,000 transactions per second using horizontally scaled services built specifically for cloud behavior What changes after I’m done: - Infrastructure and software designed to scale together - Predictable AWS costs - Systems that stay stable under load - Clear documentation and runbooks - A team that can operate it independently I build boring, predictable systems on purpose. Boring systems survive audits, scale events, and 3am incidents. If you’re dealing with cost pressure, reliability issues, or compliance risk, send me your biggest concern. I’ll tell you exactly what I would fix first and whether it’s worth doing. If it’s not a fit, I’ll say so.

  • Amazon DynamoDB
  • Node.js
  • API Development
  • AWS Lambda
  • API
  • Startup Company
  • Amazon ECS
  • AWS AppSync
  • AWS IoT Core
  • Socket Programming
  • AWS CloudFormation
  • AWS CodeDeploy
  • CI/CD
  • AWS Fargate
  • AWS CloudFront
Cong Thao V.

Hanoi, Vietnam

$50/hr
5.0
48 jobs

⭐ Golden Kubestronaut and Multi-cloud certified expert 𝐊𝐮𝐛𝐞𝐫𝐧𝐞𝐭𝐞𝐬 Golden Kubestronaut CKA: Certified Kubernetes Administrator CKS: Certified Kubernetes Security Specialist CKAD: Certified Kubernetes Application Developer CAPA: Certified Argo Project Associate PCA: Prometheus Certified Associate ICA: Istio Certified Associate OTCA: OpenTelemetry Certified Associate CGOA: Certified GitOps Associate CCA: Cilium Certified Associate KCA: Kyverno Certified Associate CBA: Certified Backstage Associate LFCS: Linux Foundation Certified Systems Administrator 𝐀𝐖𝐒 AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional AWS Certified DevOps Engineer – Professional AWS Certified Security – Specialty AWS Certified Advanced Networking – Specialty 𝐆𝐨𝐨𝐠𝐥𝐞 Professional Cloud Architect Certification Professional Cloud DevOps Engineer Certification Professional Cloud Network Engineer Certification Professional Cloud Security Engineer Certification 𝐀𝐳𝐮𝐫𝐞 Microsoft Certified: DevOps Engineer Expert ⭐ Total of 10+ years of mixed experience in DevOps, Cloud Migration and infrastructure design Battle-tested DevOps engineer with more than 10 years specializing in bare-metal servers, virtualization /containerization environments (OpenStack, OpenShift), and public cloud providers (AWS, Google Cloud, Azure). I have helped my clients achieve the following: ■ 75% reduction in lead time for changes ■ 70% reduction in change failure rate ■ 80% increase in deployment frequency ■ 70% reduction in mean time to recovery ■ Setting up and managing production Kubernetes clusters with excellent API responsiveness (99% of all API calls return in less than 1 second) and Pod startup time (99% of pods start within 5 seconds) Top-notched in-depth knowledge and hands-on experiences in Kubernetes ecosystem and containerization world. Certified by Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) in various certification programs: Golden Kubestronaut Familiar with DevOps tools and software: Terraform, Jenkins, CircleCI, GitlabCI, ArgoCD, Ansible, Vault, SonarQube, Nexus, Jfrog, Kafka, Zookeeper, ELK, Datadog, Grafana, Prometheus, Istio, Cillium, Alert Manager, Checkpoint I work as the lead infrastructure engineer at Bao Viet Holdings, the largest Vietnamese insurance company, and Vietnam's seventh-largest listed company by market capitalization. Given that the organization is publicly traded (HOSE: BVH), it mandates the highest security level measures. One of my core duties is to manage the whole infrastructure and servers, ensuring full operational capacity, functionality, and security, as below: ■ Optimizing test automation, trunk-based development, and working in small batches ■ Consciously tracking and reporting on change failure rates ■ Implementing an automated deployment pipeline that incorporates automated testing and feedback mechanisms ■ Continuously monitoring system health and alerting operations staff in the event of a failure ■ Equipping operations staff with the necessary processes, tools, and permissions to resolve incidents Need a similar secured infrastructure and CI/CD pipeline setup for your team? Let's have a quick chat 💬

  • Kubernetes
  • Amazon Web Services
  • Google Cloud Platform
  • Azure DevOps
  • Terraform
  • DevOps
  • Ansible
  • OpenShift
  • Jenkins
  • Cloud Security
  • OpenStack
  • Prometheus
  • Proxmox VE
  • Network Engineering
  • Solution Architecture

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Moving to the Cloud: What to Know & Who to Hire

What is “The Cloud”?

The cloud is synonymous with modern computing. A majority of businesses—from startups to massive corporations—use it in some capacity to augment or streamline their existing operations, data storage, hosting, and app deployment. So what is the cloud and how is it changing traditional server setups across the globe?

The U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) defines the cloud as “a model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction.”

In short, it’s allowing companies to reengineer their back-end architectures (servers, databases, application software, and more) and put them in virtual environments where they can be accessed remotely, without requiring physical server hardware of their own. Cloud services (also known as web services) are a blanket way to describe these computing capabilities.

The benefits of using cloud and web service providers

Adopting an infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) platform like Amazon Web Services (AWS) or a platform-as-a-service model (PaaS) from a provider like Heroku can take some of the responsibilities of hosting, maintaining, updating, and scaling up server operations off the hands of developers and IT managers. An IaaS will provide you with all the components you need to build a backend architecture, offering flexibility and plenty of scalability. Note that deploying a site or app’s back end to the cloud with an IaaS requires more configuration, while deploying with a PaaS doesn’t require as much configuration—just enable the services you need within the platform’s environment, push the code to it, and it handles the rest.

While their clients benefit from a virtual environment, cloud service providers themselves have massive data centers that are as big as multiple football fields. These servers are usually set up in a way that some can fail (or, even a majority of them), but not in a way that all of the services will be taken down. It’s important to know that it’s still possible for cloud computing to have a single point of failure, or to have certain services fail.

This has brought about the need for more engineers who know how to integrate, work with, and fix cloud-based operations. You may not need a full-time network engineer if you’re operating in the cloud, but you’ll definitely need a skilled development operations professional to ensure things run smoothly.

Here’s a look at a few of the top providers in the cloud services market:

  • Amazon Web Services (AWS): Popular with startups looking to get things going in the cloud for cheap, this platform is also powerful enough for large, enterprise operations.
  • Google Cloud Platform: This popular PaaS offers cloud computing, storage, big data and API services so you can build and launch sites or complex applications in the cloud. It offers things like SQL and NoSQL database services, analytics, virtual machines, all of which can be mixed and matched to suit your needs.
  • Microsoft Azure: An enterprise-level Paas and IaaS cloud provider, it offers mobile and web app deployment and scaling, database services, virtual machines, mobile back ends, machine learning, and more.
  • Heroku: A popular PaaS where applications can be completely built, deployed and run in the cloud.
  • Rackspace: This PaaS offers cloud computing through its infrastructure (either dedicated servers, public cloud, or private cloud, all of which can be mixed and matched for a hybrid environment), or their partnerships with Azure and AWS.
  • Cloud Foundry: This open-source PaaS written in Ruby and Go offers cloud computing services with an enterprise-grade option, Pivotal.
  • Xen Cloud Platform (XCP): This open source virtualization solution that provides cloud computing and back-end virtualization. XCP includes an enterprise-ready set of tools with the Xen Hypervisor, with the Xen API for cloud, storage and networking operations.
  • Oracle: This enterprise giant has made recent updates to its cloud capabilities, helping big businesses leverage the cloud, but also offering small- to medium-sized businesses cloud computing services.
  • Apache Cloudstack: a free, open-source cloud software for creating and deploying cloud services that has excellent support for virtualization and the AWS API.

Beyond data centers: making the move to the cloud

With the rise of the cloud, the server landscape is rapidly changing, with more server-side operations being pushed off-site. Small, medium, and enterprise-level companies can easily expand the size, storage, and processing power of their servers in a way that takes less time, and less money.

For startups in particular, these cloud-based platforms take server upkeep and support off their plates so they can focus on growing their businesses. They also offer flexibility and speed, with the ability to scale up quickly when needed. Scaling up can be hard to do in a physical data center: ordering new hardware, provisioning, and racking, and stacking can take anywhere from three to six weeks. In the cloud, you can provision capacity on the fly.

The key to moving to the cloud is striking the right balance for your organization—whether that’s a hybrid approach or all-in.

Adopting a hybrid cloud approach

A majority of businesses are finding that a hybrid approach works best, leaving some things on traditional, local servers and moving more resource-heavy applications to the cloud. This can be a permanent strategic solution, or a stop along the way to going 100% cloud-based. There are benefits to leaving certain portions of your back-end infrastructure on virtualized local servers or co-located data centers, while moving more resource-heavy applications to the cloud.

For example, migrating a back-end architecture to Amazon Web Services (AWS) allows for automatic scaling, the ability to fail over multiple availability zones, its accommodations for peaky traffic and intensive operations (e.g., some of our machine learning models), and the ability to free up a team to focus on application-specific work rather than solving problems Amazon can address.

Public cloud vs. private cloud

A common approach is to divvy up a server’s workload with a mix of private (onsite) and public (cloud services) clouds. Larger, enterprise companies often opt for a private cloud/onsite server architecture. One reason? Protecting sensitive data.

For some organizations in regulated industries, like finance, there are restrictions on what information they can store in the cloud. Because of this, they have to strike a balance between storing sensitive information on-site while still making it available in the cloud, so they can take advantage of the agility and scalability the cloud offers.

Critical apps are often better suited for a private cloud for security and reliability reasons. The main concerns with critical apps are performance (speed, reliability, and no downtime) and security of your information. A privately hosted cloud is a good bet for these, giving you more control along with the flexibility you want.

Less critical apps like web servers, backup services, and infrastructures are safer in the public cloud. There, you’ll get servers that allow you to free up space on-site, plus the benefit of temporary scalability if you need it, with increased capacity just a click away. Also, a public cloud configuration can even be treated like software code and placed in a repository where developers can edit, adjust, and run tests against your current configuration, which is helpful for ensuring a successful deployment, and for getting the most out of the cloud.

Should you move to the cloud? What to consider before deploying to the cloud

For small businesses, there are some clear advantages to using the cloud—whether it’s going entirely to the cloud, or using a hybrid approach that breaks up your server workload between an on-site infrastructure and the cloud.

The benefits? It’s an invisible, offsite server that you can scale up when and how you want. If you have an application that requires a lot of space, data, or resources, you can shift that over to the cloud while freeing up space in your current setup.

Small businesses can strike a strategic balance between traditional on-site servers and cloud servers, so it’s important to ask yourself a few questions about your setup before choosing the one that’s right for you. And if you're not sure you can always seek the advice from cloud consulting specialists.

  1. Take a look at your existing back-end infrastructure. What are your requirements, and what are your end-user’s requirements? What will diversifying to the cloud do to help with these? Consider compatibility of your server-side software. While some businesses don’t move all of their server-side architecture to the cloud, it’s helpful to ensure cloud compatibility in the components they keep on-site.
  2. Decide what should go where. Plan how you’ll virtualize your back end. If you’re a small business, basic server functions like an email server or an app server could probably stay on-site. Or, apps that don’t require as much data storage could stay local, too. Be sure to prioritize your needs. You may opt to divvy up the workload with a hybrid cloud environment, keeping mini servers on-site to handle smaller workloads, like file sharing servers. These can even be designed to sync up with cloud drives.
  3. What’s your budget? This will help narrow down which cloud service is right for you. The great thing about the cloud? Flexibility. If you start out small and find you need more, you can easily upgrade subscriptions or buy more data—no need to switch out hard drives.
  4. Who should you hire or have on your team to help? Do you have a server professional available to help with maintenance or fixes? Because you don’t have to worry about hardware with cloud servers, it can be a more seamless integration for IT professionals, but it’s not without its quirks. Make sure you have a dev ops engineer who has plenty of experience integrating with the cloud and handling issues with network reliability that can arise.
  5. How scalable does it need to be? How much growth you anticipate in terms of traffic and data for your application or site’s server play a very important role in how you decide to set up your server. You’ll want to be able to expand your server space without having to totally replace it, whether that means starting with a setup that allows you to switch out hard drives for hard drives with more memory, or virtualizing your setup across numerous smaller servers.
  6. Security. Security is always a big concern—if you have very sensitive information being stored on your server, you may opt to keep that on-site while moving less sensitive information to the cloud. Or, go for a private cloud/hybrid cloud environment that allows you to maintain a more secure environment, and lets your IT professionals keep tighter control on what data is stored/shared where.

The need for cloud engineers

From a talent standpoint, running your server operations in the cloud means you won’t need the same network and storage engineers on hand to take care of day-to-day server issues—but maintenance and support won’t be totally off the table.

Look for a cloud server architect with plenty of experience deploying operations to the cloud. Some key skills and expertise to look for in a dev ops engineer are:

  • Configuration management skills: Chef, Puppet, Ansible, etc.
  • Virtualization experience: VMware, Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM), Xen, etc.
  • Public cloud experience: Amazon Web Services, Google, Rackspace