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What is Cloud Provisioning?

Cloud provisioning is the process by which cloud resources are made available to customers. Cloud service providers offer various cloud deployment models to access their cloud infrastructure, including IaaS, PaaS and SaaS – Infrastructure, Platform or Software as a Service. You need to select the cloud deployment model that best suits your business. The cloud deployment model that you select will drive the cloud provisioning process. Cloud provisioning is part of the overall configuration process used by cloud service providers to deliver your cloud resources.

Cloud provisioning allows your business to scale exponentially. You no longer need to invest in significant upfront capital to build a physical data center. Instead, cloud provisioning gives you the option to spin up computing resources when you need them.

As much as you need to spin up cloud resources to meet user demand, you need to also ensure that these cloud resources are deactivated when no longer needed. Depending on the type of cloud provisioning model that you chose, you will gain a lot of flexibility in scaling up your cloud resources to meet peaks in user demand, as well as scaling back down when no longer needed.

In this digital age, speed matters. Cloud provisioning allows you to quickly take your new product or service to market, without relying on a full in-house IT team. Cloud provisioning also frees you up from having to manage your own computing infrastructure. In this way, you can focus on growing your business to meet growing customer demand.

Although cloud provisioning gives you the capacity that you need to meet your cloud computing needs, when it comes to performance, however, you may be surprised by how slow your data-intensive workloads and applications run once on the cloud. Many newer companies and startups are considered cloud native. For legacy companies and more established organizations, however, embracing the cloud can be an uphill battle. You have to consider the impact that migrating to the cloud will have on your performance.

To meet the levels of performance that you were once used to on-premises, you may be forced to over provision your cloud resources. Keep in mind though, that on the cloud, every byte counts. Provisioning more cloud resources translates to a higher cloud bill at the end of the month – dipping into your bottom line.

What if there was a better way to get the performance that you need, with the flexibility and scalability of the cloud, all without over provisioning cloud resources?

Enter Silk.

Silk breaks the link between capacity and performance on the cloud. The Silk Cloud DB Virtualization Platform sits between your data and the cloud. As a result, you are able to store large amounts of data, run your most data-intensive workloads, and still achieve peak performance – all without over provisioning cloud resources.

Silk offers rich, enterprise data services including data deduplication, zero-footprint snapshots, data reduction, and thin provisioning. These features are not available in native cloud alone. These services minimize the amount of cloud resources you ultimately need, which in turn, reduces your cloud costs by 30%.

Silk also combats data inflation once you’ve migrated to the cloud. With Silk you can quickly migrate your data and applications to the cloud and get the high level of performance you need, at a price that won’t blow your budget.

Cloud Provisioning FAQs

What are the Types of Cloud Provisioning Models?

There are 3 main types of cloud provisioning models: Advanced Provisioning, Dynamic Provisioning, and User Self-Provisioning.

With Advanced Provisioning, you and your preferred cloud service provider set up a formal agreement that lays out the type and quantity of cloud resources that you require. Once the formal agreement is accepted by both parties, the cloud service provider provisions the cloud resources as requested.

Dynamic Provisioning is a pay-as-you-go model in which you pay for cloud resources to meet your internal and external user demand when you need it.

For individuals and smaller organizations, user self-provisioning allows you to use a credit card to buy cloud resources from a web application or portal on demand. Popular applications such as Canva, G-Suite, and WordPress are examples of user self-provisioning.

What are Cloud Provisioning Tools?

The most popular cloud service providers offer tools to help you provision cloud resources and services in bulk. These tools include:

You can also choose to work with third party tools that offer automation of the cloud provisioning process.

What are the Advantages of Cloud Provisioning?

Cloud provisioning allows you to enjoy the full flexibility and scalability of the cloud. By managing your cloud resources well with a partner like Silk, you can also enjoy significant cost savings over an on-premises computing model.

What are the Drawbacks of Cloud Provisioning?

Cloud provisioning may come with resource and service dependencies that are not immediately obvious. There are also stricter policies when it comes to cloud provisioning. Cloud service providers use these policies to streamline the process on their end. For end users, this adds a level of complexity that can become a time-consuming process.

Since the public cloud is shared by design, your performance may suffer over time. You may be forced to over provision cloud resources to get the performance you were used to on-premises. Silk decouples capacity from performance, so you get the flexibility and scalability of the cloud, at a price that won’t break the bank.