If cloud is just someone else’s data center, what’s the point of moving there anyway? Companies that see cloud computing simply as a place to park software stuff are indeed missing the point. Cloud operating and pricing models differ from the on-premises models they may be used to. They can make friends with them and score productivity and agility gains; or they could let cloud services go to waste and bleed a lot of cash in the process. It all depends on how they act in their new cloud home.

There’s plenty of choice in public cloud. Open the right door to cloud computing, and greet cost savings and modern machine-learning to automate software management. Open the wrong door, and meet a costly slap in the face and some ill-fitting software service.

Enterprises predicted they’d invest an average of $3.5 million on cloud applications, platforms and services in 2018, according to the IDG Communications Inc.’s 2018 Cloud Computing Survey. A specialized breed of consultants has sprung up to help customers navigate their migration to the cloud. They assist customers in choosing the right services, controlling cost, and getting the agility and elasticity they came for.

“I think the unique value that experienced partners bring to the ecosystem is helping customers find the right path for them,” said Tolga Tarhan (pictured, right), chief technology officer of Onica Group LLC. Large enterprises, startups, software as a service vendors — all are coming to cloud from different points. They have different goals — some want to totally overhaul their businesses; others are looking boost some specific processes with cloud services. 

Onica is an AWS Premier Consulting Partner, steering customers through the ever-growing AWS service catalog. The computing giant now offers so much more than basic infrastructure to help companies get a competitive edge in their software and applications. Most customers have at least rudimentary understanding of how to spin up compute resources on AWS, according to Tarhan.

“There’s a hundred other services that look and feel like they could help you. And our job as partners is to help you identify the right ones for your requirements. The flexibility that AWS provides is part of the value, but it also means you have to be responsible and educated about how to use it,” he said.

Tarhan and Jeremy Bendat (pictured, left), director of business development and partnerships at Onica, spoke with Jeff Frick (@JeffFrick), host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the AWS Marketplace and Service Catalog Experience Hub event in Las Vegas. They discussed how Onica helps different customers find their legs in cloud. (* Disclosure below.)

This week, theCUBE spotlights Onica in our Startup of the Week feature.

Making cloud cattle carry their weight 

Don’t think of cloud as just a place to park, Tarhan advised. The elasticity of cloud infrastructure and services, and of the pay-as-you-go model, means that cloud computing is living, dynamic, productive. He likens the difference between traditional infrastructure and cloud to the difference between pets and cattle.

“So you’ve got pets that you love, and you care for them. And you’ve got cattle that are for a purpose. You raise them, and then you use them for milk or food. And in the cloud, we want that latter model,” he stated. 

Customers who don’t understand this and go to cloud simply to park stuff are making a big, potentially expensive mistake. This is the cause for some of the cloud boomerang cases popping up. Companies move workloads to cloud, only to be shocked by the cost. They wind up pulling them back on-prem with nothing but a lot of time, hassle and expense to show for their cloud experiment, Tarhan added.

“There’s some fascinating data that says 80 percent of customers receive a cloud bill north of three times what they expected to spend,” said Ben Nye, chief executive officer at Turbonomic Inc., who recently spoke to theCUBE. Clearly, customers have to get smarter about how they leverage the cloud’s elastic infrastructure and pricing structure, he explained.

“A lot of customers think the cloud is a logical strategy for them, but over time they see that it increases cost,” Jeff Kroth, manager of data management and analytics at Softchoice Corp., told theCUBE. “It’s really about aligning the rightsizing of your environment, moving the right applications, the right data to the cloud and using that as part of your overall strategy.”

Making friends with flexibility

A developer operations approach from the outset can help mitigate these cost issues, according to Tarhan.

“What I mean by that is, think about how you’re going to automate deployment, think about how you’re going to deliver code from wherever it comes to production in an automated way early in the process,” he said. “Because if you spin up a giant environment, kind of manually and haphazardly, that’s when this kind of cost runaway stuff starts to show its ugly head.”

Flexible pricing can be a friend or foe. If users are lazy about it, costs can quickly creep up, Bendat pointed out. “Don’t leave your instances on and walk away,” he said. The number of times Onica has seen customers do that is shocking, he added. 

Onica has reselling partnerships with SaaS providers in the AWS Marketplace. This allows Onica customers to bypass paperwork, access a SaaS product with the click of a button, try it, and either adopt it widely or chuck it. This is the kind of agility that makes cloud a wonderful place to experiment and innovate, according to Bendat.

“It fast tracks that procurement cycle. They would otherwise have to go through all of those legal docs,” he said. “If we can, at the click of a button, enable one of our customers to adopt a product or even POC it in a very short period of time and turn it off … the Marketplace opens up a ton of doors for these customers.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the AWS Marketplace and Service Catalog Experience Hub event. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the AWS Marketplace and Service Catalog Experience Hub event. Neither Amazon Web Services Inc., the event sponsor, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE