Summary

  • The expansion of services and innovation happening in the cloud is evident today.
  • AWS’s most recently added Graviton chips are one of the latest improvements in cloud computing infrastructure, with a potential 40% reduction in price.
  • CloudCalculator.com can be used to build your business case today.
  • The real case for migrating to the cloud is not to adopt new CPU architectures. It is to enter into the cloud paradigm so that you can adopt Graviton CPUs today, and continue to adopt further innovations with the industry in the future.

The cloud is always innovating. One of the more recent and large breakthroughs has been the advancement and improvements in CPU architectures. Specifically with ARM CPU processors, where we are seeing adoption across all forms of computing, not only cloud, but also laptops with Apple’s M1, and of course in the past decade with mobile phones. The more recent availability in cloud computing therefore is not surprising, given the progress made in all other areas of technology. It offers all of the same benefits and the architecture allows for higher performance, lower energy consumption and therefore lower costs. Which gives the user the power to do more for less, or to reduce their costs to do the same.

AWS say it best themselves:

Graviton’s competitive pricing and performance advantage means you can lower computing cost by reducing unit costs and running smaller server footprints. Graviton instances offer up to 40% better price performance compared to current generation instance types. Instances are on average 10–20% cheaper than alternatives in the same instance family. Amazon Web Services AWS Graviton Performance Testing 10 Graviton’s performance advantage also enables you to run smaller server footprints, leading to less instance to maintain and pay for in production. The combination of these benefits leads to lower COGS

AWS Graviton Performance Testing

And it is not only AWS saying this. There are lots of blogs and reports from organizations out there showing the same results. If you are already in the cloud, then your development teams are able to leverage these new gains today. And if you are not, the reduction in costs and increase in performance is an excellent factor to help better justify a business case for migrating your organization to the cloud.

Here at Tidal Migrations, we offer CloudCalculator.com for that use case, building a business case for migrating to the cloud. And of course, Cloud Calculator considers, and is able to recommend, AWS Graviton instances based on your existing computing infrastructure. If your organization is able to make the necessary changes in order to adopt the new CPU architecture (recompiling software, upgrading dependencies, etc.), then you are able to realize all the benefits to be had. Considering price and performance, the economics are clear. In general, there is potential for significant gain in efficiency and optimization that will have a large impact on the costs to justify any IT project.

Really though, the true business case for moving to the cloud is that the economics are improving constantly. The cloud infrastructure and services that are available only continue to increase. With it comes economies of scale, cost advantages and service advantages that only cloud providers can realize. The scale that cloud providers are operating at is larger than most organizations can or will reach, therefore not only are they able to offer better cost-competitive services, they also benefit from innovation and practices at scale, allowing you to also benefit. The depth and breadth of services available to anyone are much greater than any one IT department could offer or would even need. As the industry further grows and matures, these trends only continue. 

For a concrete example, the latest disk types in AWS are 4 times faster and 20% cheaper than the previous version. The important part, it is one checkbox away in the console (or for mature operating teams, one-line change in infrastructure-as-code), from being realized by existing customers. Oftentimes, the improvements or reductions in costs require no action needed from the customer.  They just happen for you.

The real business case for migrating to the cloud is that if you don’t, you are opting out of the continual innovation in the information technology industry at large. Letting it carry on without you. So the best time to build your cloud business case is today. If not today - then yesterday.

Philip Rees is the Chief Technology Officer at Tidal Migrations. Connect on Twitter at @prees11.