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A transforming cloud

Every decade or so a technology concept arrives that changes the way we do business. Each one promises efficiency, productivity and revenue gains and each one transforms the way the IT department works and functions. The latest kid on the block is cloud computing, the notion of placing your applications somewhere other than in your own physical infrastructure and accessing it through the cloud, which as an example could be a virtual private network (VPN) or even the Internet.

It is the responsibility of every IT manager, CIO and business executive to understand the positive impacts as well as some of the risks involved in taking their business into the cloud.

Firstly is cost. The public cloud negates the need to invest in ongoing costs for purchasing and maintaining hardware and it is said to reduce costs associated to IT management as it is handled off-site. It has been reported that organisations that have moved their business into the cloud have saved between 35-65% on their hardware investments. Savings best used for business innovation as opposed to IT investment.

Secondly comes service availability, which embraces the notion that when IT crashes so can your business. An outage in your systems will not only affect your business but your customers too. Cloud providers are required to ensure that they have measures in place to ensure they meet customer SLAs as well as ensure availability and reliability – which takes the strain off your department and places it in the hands of the experts.

Thirdly is being able to take advantage of improved efficiency. The fact of the matter is that IT virtualisation is here to stay and through the cloud you can start to make use of virtualisation technologies to assist with the optimisation of hardware use ensuring the best management of your hardware assets. Ultimately ensuring your business is more efficient and agile.

Fourth, and this is in no particular order, as many would argue that this is the most critical, is security. Managing compliance, regulatory frameworks and legal constraints yourself can be a quagmire, but your cloud service provider needs to know what security your business needs, what privacy standards need to be adhered to and ultimately who has access to your data. With cloud computing you can ensure more stringent IT and risk policies from a centralised location.

Fifth is technology innovation and the ability to tap into the latest technologies without having to make the investment yourself. In the cloud the issues of outdated on-premise software versions and compatibility are suddenly a non-issue as it is the role of your service provider to ensure that the hardware and software you access is the latest.

Sixth is application management, a big hot button in IT at the moment. Managing onsite applications and the user’s use thereof can be a minefield, however, in the cloud you can ensure that only business relevant applications are installed, that only the right number of users can access these applications, and that security parameters are set. Cloud service providers deploy application management systems that will help you better monitor your usage and provide you reports based on fact which then allows you to make better business decisions around your software purchases.

Seventh is the pay as you use model. So while many of us invest in huge infrastructures which are so badly managed we never really know how much of the resource we use, this model removes the bulky overhead of paying for unnecessary hardware, licences and applications that you no longer make use of, or make minimal use of. In theory your application costs should be variable dependent solely on your usage and the cloud makes this possible.

Eighth is scalability, whether this is increasing or decreasing the size or number of resources you require. By hosting your systems offsite you can take advantage of improved scalability, as your service provider needs to ensure that your systems have access to the resources it needs in order to perform functions effectively.

Ninth is familiarity of systems. The cloud does not have to be full of applications and systems you have never seen before. It can be a complete replica of the systems you are accustomed to without the daunting risk of needing to train your teams on new applications they have never seen before. You control what you put in and what you want in the cloud.

Lastly, the tenth reason is choice. The beauty of the cloud is that you can tailor it to meet your individual needs, there is no way that the cloud can be divvied up and equal parts given to a string of customers. You choose what you need, you choose what size you need, and you choose what your cloud needs to do. Most importantly you do this within a scope and budget that meets your need without bloated overheads.

Armed with the above information I cannot imagine why an organisation would not want to enter the cloud. The benefits are vast, the risks can be mitigated when choosing the right partner and the gains to business are dramatic. Now it is simply about choosing your cloud game.

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