Cloud Consulting Services Needed? 10 Sites That Can Help

“Get your head out of the clouds!”

Usually, sound advice. These days, perhaps not so much. With the advent of the cloud — and the service offerings that come with it — there may be more business sense in being cloud-obsessed, than not.

To grasp the power of this technology, it is worth taking a closer look. Cloud consulting is a suite of professional services that enable you and your IT department to become fully cloud-native, thereby giving you the ability to tackle the future head-on.

Ask Not What You Can Do for the Cloud, But What the Cloud Can Do for You

The cloud is a way of describing a network of servers that deliver virtual ‘space’ which can be used in a multitude of ways to the benefit of the company using it. According to Jigsaw, “the software and services run through the internet as opposed to the traditional system of hard drives or private servers.” This means cost reduction and agile adaptation to company needs versus ‘on-premises’ solutions, which are less flexible and adaptable.

Let’s take a look at some of the main players in the cloud game and understand how cloud consulting can help to deploy vital cloud-based benefits. Below we’ve gathered 10 sites that can help you on your way to becoming cloud-native.

Large Management Consulting Firms Offer Cloud Consulting

Given an economic climate that is at best turbulent and at worst chaotic, staying one step ahead of the curve is crucial as ever. A trusted consulting partner can assist. Cloud services are at the forefront of a series of technological transformations that signify the future, whether we are happy to make that transition, or if we are dragging our heels. Understandably so. After all, who wants to deliver their most precious assets to a corner of the internet to which someone else holds the keys? It doesn’t sound very appealing, even if it is incredibly useful. The argument has been made that leadership teams must be at the helm of ushering in new technology changes, chief of these being the cloud transition. According to Forbes, the recommended approach is one of CEO cloud evangelism, incentivization, and hiring of relevant talent. To help make the cloud a little less, well, cloudy - here is an overview of large consulting houses, smaller consulting boutiques as well as the cloud platforms the solutions offered, run on.

Accenture

Accenture boasts 710,000 employees and serves over 7,000 clients across 120 countries. Particularly strong in technology, they are frontrunners when it comes to integrating new cloud functionality based on existing and/or new infrastructure. Partnering with some of the best in the field, Accenture leverages a strong track record within technology consulting. In their own words:

“Take the world by cloud. Uncover value faster across every part of your business with Accenture Cloud First. We embrace the power of change to create 360° value by putting the cloud at the core of your business. Our approach puts your business needs first, creating industry-specific solutions to get you moved to—and benefiting from—the cloud now. Discover new and better ways to reveal the power of cloud computing. From migration to cloud management, we work with you to help your business realize its full promise and achieve value in every direction.”

Deloitte

Deloitte is another well-established consulting house that offers a range of professional services. They have been operational for over 175 years, working in 150+ countries and with a headcount of over 330,000. Here is what they have to say about their cloud capabilities:

“Cloud is more than a technology. It’s an opportunity. It’s a chance to reimagine and retool your organization’s approach to data. Seizing this opportunity requires deep understanding. Explore our cloud-related thoughtware and perspectives to discover your possible and start making it a reality.”

Smaller Tech Players Offer Cloud Consulting

SADA

SADA is headquartered in LA, boasts 1400+ employees on LinkedIn and offers cloud consulting services for over 3,000 clients. Below a bit of their own flair - they pride themselves on delivering cloud solutions specifically with the Google Cloud platform. The most popular cloud platforms available, which includes the Google Cloud, are discussed in the following section.

“YOU CAN GO GOOGLE WITH SADA.

When it comes to Google Cloud, we’re not an add-on, but a must-have. As a multi-year award-winning Google Cloud Premier Partner, we harness the power of Google Cloud to help you activate what you need and when you need it.”

ELEKS

ELEKS’ Olga Afanasyeva, Head of ELEKS Kyiv Branch Office, recently appeared in a Forbes article, expressing the need to “speak up and express the truth about the war [in Ukraine]”. It’s not possible to say that it is business as usual in this part of the world - and perhaps this very factor may inspire support for this relatively small, but nevertheless powerful player in the provision of cloud services. By LinkedIn’s accounts, this firm sits in the 1K - 5K employee bracket, and has its headquarters in the United Kingdom. For what they have to say about their own offering, see below:

“ ELEKS is the partner of choice for many of the world’s leading enterprises, SMEs, and technology challengers. We help businesses elevate their value through custom software development, product design, QA, and consultancy services.”

Cloud Consulting Requires a Cloud Platform

Cloud consulting consists of advisory services for how to integrate cloud solutions into your business. It follows, then, that a cloud platform is necessary to support the recommendations that cloud consultants make. According to Cloud Bolt, “A cloud platform refers to the operating system and hardware of a server in an Internet-based data center. It allows software and hardware products to co-exist remotely and at scale.”

There are different organisations that offer the platforms required to run cloud services recommended by cloud consultants. The biggest competitors in this space currently are Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud.

Amazon Web Services

Amazon Web Services is one of the most popular cloud platform providers, and it enjoys the custom of several market leading organisations. By Yahoo! Finance’s accounts, they serve big pharmaceuticals such as Pfizer and Novartis, major FMCG players such as Unilever and Johnson & Johnson as well as fellow leaders within the technology industry such as SAP.

The cost structure provides benefits to the customers who enjoy the service, according to Investopedia. Scalable, it promises users that they only pay for what they use - a huge advantage for large as well as small firms, given that demands can vary from month to month, and even year to year. Geographically diverse, it also supports large multinationals with their global operating base, ticking boxes for many Fortune 500 companies that need their cloud services to cover all of their locations.

Indeed, the AWS website itself boasts the benefits of their flexible cost structure:

“Total Cost of Ownership. With cloud storage, there is no hardware to purchase, storage to provision, or capital being used for "someday" scenarios. You can add or remove capacity on demand, quickly change performance and retention characteristics, and only pay for storage that you actually use. Less frequently accessed data can even be automatically moved to lower-cost tiers following auditable rules, driving economies of scale.

Gartner Peer Insights gives AWS a solid 4.5 out of 5 stars.

Microsoft Azure

Microsoft Azure represents one of the leading cloud platforms around today - if you really want to get your head in the cloud, this may be the partner for you. Favoured by big hitting clients including the NHS, the NBA and General Electric, Microsoft Azure is a trusted platform.

Gartner Peer Insights gives Microsoft Azure 4.4 out of 5 stars.

Google Cloud

Google Cloud is a serious contender within the cloud platform space. One of its USPs is its ambitious sustainability goals, which it describes as follows:

“Build a carbon-free future on the cleanest cloud in the industry. Google Cloud is the only major cloud provider to purchase enough renewable energy to cover our operations, including your workloads.”

If your business prides itself on sustainability, this may be the platform of choice for you.

Gartner Peer Insights gives Google Cloud 4.5 out of 5 stars.

Pre-Vetted Pangea Vendors

Sprintform

Sprintform, a preferred Pangea partner vendor also offers cloud services and has this to say about their technology solutions:

“While we are into web and mobile software development, we have strong support teams with business analysts, designers, testers, DevOps engineers, and scrum masters. We preach an agile software development approach from day one. We can deliver digital products and services from scratch and efficiently handle those backlog items that are important for you but don't have enough time or resources to build them.”

Kalmia

Kalmia, another top-rated and pre-vetted Pangea partner offers a host of digital services, including cloud services:

“Kalmia is a one-stop shop for your digitalization needs. We will support you from ideas through workshops to final implementation. Our passion is web technologies, starting with cloud infrastructure via modern backend and frontend frameworks to distributed systems powered by blockchain. We love to discuss your daily processes and how they can evolve and become more efficient. Building a new MVP or PoC is a joy for us, putting it into production and measuring results is a thrill. We practice what we preach as we've built a number of new successful digital products along the way and attract millions of dollars in investments.”

Pangea’s Smart Brief Tool

Smart Brief is a tool you can access right here, right now: Pangea’s very own way to decipher and cater to your every technological need, including all the cloud goodies you can handle.

FAQs:

Q1. What does a cloud consultant do?

“A cloud consultant designs, implements, migrates, or maintains cloud applications, processes, or computing systems for an organization.” – Ziprecruiter.com

Put simply, cloud consultants perform advisory services to their clients, providing insights and know-how from their industry and functional area of expertise. Done well, they can help you to devise a clever cloud strategy that helps to catapult your business into new digital frontiers. Cloud consulting ordinarily is not done in isolation - it comprises teams that are able to leverage different skillsets to see the project through to completion. From initial analysis, recommendations, strategy all the way through to implementation and ideally, maintenance. Sometimes more than one cloud consulting firm can advise a client and complement each other by offering capabilities that work in tandem to provide value to the end customer.

Q2. What does an AWS cloud consultant do?

A cloud consultant is a cloud consultant - meaning, in essence, the job is the same regardless of which cloud provider you go with. An AWS cloud consultant specifically performs his or her job in the context of the AWS platform.

Indeed, on their AWS Professional Services website, they describe themselves as “a global team of experts that can help you realize your desired business outcomes when using the AWS Cloud. We work together with your team and your chosen member of the AWS Partner Network (APN) to execute your enterprise cloud computing initiatives.”

Q3. What is a cloud applications consultant?

A cloud applications consultant is someone who, according to a job description by OpenText, acts as the main contact point for their client’s specific requests, regarding “addition of new trading partners, document types, and connection types.”

Strong skillsets in systems integration as well as service delivery make the cloud applications consultant a great resource to their clients as they can get hands-on with the technical specifications of the cloud solution on offer. As such, they are the ones on the ground getting the cloud solution running as per client requirements.