BigHub has been stark in its promotion of cloud-first strategies. Some of our senior engineers have been building on-prem and hybrid solutions for nearly a decade now, which is precisely the reason why we are so excited about the cloud, cloud-native solutions, and their current and future possibilities.
Traditionally there have been two arguments for on-prem infrastructure: security and costs. But with the growing maturity of cloud solutions, both these arguments are losing their gravity.
Cloud infrastructure seems more expensive only on paper - the price of computation is much higher than on servers you own. But the trick is in the flexibility of the cloud and pay-as-you-go model. A typical on-prem data platform would be built to run at 30% of the capacity, so the company is able to compute even the night loads of data. But that also means that 70 % of the infrastructure lies unutilized most of the time. You can run on-prem effectively or securely, not both. Security earned by owning the hardware comes with the price of taking good care of it. And that is usually very costly - not only in terms of money but also in time and focus. Maintenance and keeping the up-to-date stack needs qualified personnel and is usually so time-consuming that most of the companies don‘t do a very good job in keeping it up.
That is why we love cloud computing. And while we have extensive experience with AWS, little experience with GCP, and did projects even on IBM cloud, nowadays most of the time we choose Microsoft Azure as the right cloud platform for our clients’ needs. In our enterprise space, the Microsoft stack is dominant, and Azure is the standard. While historically AWS had the best features, Microsoft has done a great job in catching up. These two biggest cloud platforms are now almost unrecognizable feature-wise. Azure is also doing a much better job when IoT is involved. Having Microsoft‘s office here in Prague and great local technical support is a plus.
BigHub is capable of E2E solutions; in some of our projects, we deal with networking initially, set up VPN, and take care of the last mile - deliver the analytical reports or provide front-end for business users to gain insights.
In our Azure solutions, we are leveraging the full potential of the cloud, focusing on full automation (through ARM or Terraform), Azure DevOps, easy replicability, quick deployment, as well as compliable monitoring and incident management. Focus on the right implementation and use, combined with our unique applied AI expertise, lead to a closer relationship with Microsoft.
The one thing we love most about the cloud environment is the use of Kubernetes. In BigHub, we see microservices as the future. The implementation is already super easy, and you don‘t have to waste your precious time with basics. You can have the first iteration of a project up and running in a matter of hours without needing to contact the IT department. Being able to try things out by yourself, quickly, and in a secure environment leads to the complete shift of mindset - from waterfall to agile.
Thanks to the fact we now have multiple cloud providers and multi-cloud solutions, the risk of locking yourself to one particular vendor is much lower than in the on-prem solutions.
These are just a few reasons we recommend the cloud, and namely Azure, to our clients. Our clients spent more than half of a million dollars on cloud services, saving probably twice as much in maintenance and on-prem software licenses. And to be honest, we also see the growing demand for Azure professionals, which is why we hired five specialized Azure developers in the last five months, looking to hire another five as soon as possible.
BigHub is now Gold DevOps partner, Gold Cloud Platform partner, Silver Application Development partner, and Silver Data Analytics partner. We will continue to grow our capabilities and deepening our relationship with Microsoft, learning new tactics and nuances with every single client. You can also expect our first product - IoT analytics platform, which will be featured on the Azure Marketplace sometime next month.
