Remove the Hidden Costs with a Native Cloud Solution

Transcript

Stan Miller:  Hello everyone and welcome to ROK Studios.  I’m Stan Miller, I’m the Manager of Media Relations for the EMEA Region, for Rockwell Automation. And I’m here with Curtis Riley, he is Manager of Technical Consultants in EMEA.  Curtis, welcome to the studio.  

Curtis Reilly:  Thanks for having me, Stan.

Stan Miller:  So, we’re here today to talk about removing hidden costs with a native cloud solution. Interesting topic.  Really keen to get your perspective.  So, let’s just get into it.

Curtis Reilly:  Yeah.

Stan Miller:  What are some of the main benefits that a native cloud solution has over an on-premises alternative?

Curtis Reilly:  Yeah, that’s a great question, Stan.  There are a number of key benefits that a cloud solution provides versus an on-premises.  One of them is predictability, right.  The predictability of your licenses going forward throughout your use of the cloud system.  We also, of course, have scalability, so with the cloud solution, you can scale from a very small instance up to very large instances that use the cloud solution.  So, a lot of scalability and flexibility that we provide to our customers.  One of the important things that a cloud solution provides versus an on-premise as well, is security.  A cloud platform has very high levels of security, a dedicated team managing that security all the way throughout.  So, those are a couple of the key tenets of a cloud solution.

Stan Miller:  What are the cost benefits of this approach?

Curtis Reilly:  Great question.  When you’re using a cloud-based system, you have full visibility into your cost.  You don’t have to worry about a lot of the hidden costs that we see with an on-premise solution, things like hardware, maintaining your versions, getting to an upgrade path, those are all areas that are hidden costs that most customers don’t necessarily consider when they’re looking at a solution.  With a cloud-based solution, we bake that all directly into your subscription cost.

Stan Miller:  Let’s talk about how this helps the different teams in an industrial setting.  How does this help IT teams and the wider teams work more effectively?

Curtis Reilly:  A cloud-based solution will help de-risk a lot of the issues that could occur for an IT team.  So, instead of having to maintain versions, maintain patches, when you have a cloud-based solution, you get rid of a lot of that risk.  You also, of course, get rid of the risk from a security perspective.  So, we’re maintaining the security of the entire platform, de-risking that for the IT environment.

Stan Miller:  This is really good, we really appreciate the perspective on this.  If there was one thing that you wanted our viewers to take away when considering a cloud solution versus on prem, and weighing the approach, what would it be?

Curtis Reilly:  The main thing that I would ask is to understand the uptime of the cloud solution, to understand what is included in the cloud solution that you’re looking at, and to really make sure that your provider is a provider that can offer you security and scalability as you go forward in your evaluation.

Stan Miller:  Curtis, great to talk with you about such an important topic.  Thank you for joining us in the studio today.

Curtis Reilly:  Thank you, Stan.

Stan Miller:  And thank you for watching.  If you’d like to learn more about cloud-based solutions from Rockwell Automation, visit www.rockwellautomation.com.