flIn the cloud: C
oating a new idea
Cloud computing can deliver big benefi ts to electrical contractors’ businesses. Steven Hall, ECA group head of Information Systems, explains how to make the most of cloud services and software – and looks at what’s out there
loud computing has been the talk of the town this year for both good and bad reasons – though for electrical contractors, the sort of online based services and solutions this business model offers
could be just what their business needs. Cloud services have been around for quite some time
now, but the past year has started to see such services mature into useable solutions. So what has driven this now? In part this is being driven by the availability of a scalable and fl exible infrastructure base, as billions have been invested over the past couple of years by a number of the larger players. In addition, there has been a huge marketing push, so the volume around cloud computing has been turned up considerably. One problem coming out of this is that the marketing
teams have not really come together; different names seem to abound, so ‘software as a service’ (SAAS), ‘on-demand applications’, ‘on-demand software’, ‘hosted services’, ‘hosted software’, ‘utility computing’, or ‘software-on-demand’ can all mean the same thing – adding to the confusion.
Cloud commitment There’s plenty going on at the moment in the cloud computing area – here are just a few examples that show a serious commitment from both government and providers: ■ Microsoft previously stated that ‘70 per cent of their employees are now working on cloud-related products and that is likely to rise as time goes on’. This was a quote from Steve Balmer some time ago and has most likely moved on further since then. ■ The US Federal Government is committed to cloud technology and has a policy called Cloud First, which will commit an estimated $20 billion to ongoing cloud solutions – around a quarter of the federal IT budget.
■ Closer to home, in the UK ‘cloud computing should account for half of central government’s new ICT spending by the end of 2015’, according to a strategy document published by the Cabinet Offi ce.
So before we get into the detail, how would you sum 46 ECA Today January 2012 About the author
Steven Hall Steven Hall is the ECA’s group head of Information Systems. He is responsible for the IT strategy and runs the teams responsible for system development, infrastructure support, IT security and business continuity planning.
up ‘cloud computing’ in a single generic sentence? If you Google ‘cloud’ yourself, you will see a plethora of similar but different explanations, mainly down to the fact that it is such a loose term and you can do many different things with it. The following, though, is a reasonable defi nition: ‘Cloud is essentially the delivery of a service via a public,
private or hybrid network, utilising a scalable third party infrastructure.’
Public, private and hybrid: pros and cons The nature of public, private and hybrid network needs to be understood, as there are pros and cons to each, so below we have defi ned what each of these means. Public – This uses the internet to deliver the service(s),
so does not come with any form of service level agreement (SLA), as the internet is not owned by any one company. This is the cheapest option, and you are most likely already using cloud services delivered this way – for instance, if you have any form of webmail account, such as Gmail, or if you have an iPhone and are now using iCloud to synchronise your fi les, then you are using a public cloud already. Private – A separate secure network run just for your company, which uses infrastructure from the third party providing it. A good example of this is an MPLS network, which is what the ECA uses to connect it offi ces together. These come with well-defined SLAs, as the company delivering the service has far greater control over the routes and resilience. The downside here is usually the cost. Hybrid – this is a mix of public and private, as well as
allowing you to mix with on-premise solutions that you host on your own servers. A good example of this is the Exchange portion of Offi ce 365, as you can run some services in the cloud and some on your existing hardware in your own offi ce.
What are the main advantages of cloud computing? The advantages vary depending on the solution that you are taking, so we have to be fairly general here. And, as with any solution, there can be issues you need to be aware of when deciding if it’s best for you. ■ Spreading costs – The revenue model is such that it usually means you can spread the costs across the life of the contract, so this will have an advantage for planning and cash fl ow. There is a ‘however’ here, and that is that if you use a metered service, as this can also have the opposite effect – it can be diffi cult to get real time fi gures for what you are using, such as when you
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