[ Spotlight: Cloud computing ]
using a tier one provider or household name, you need to ensure that you know what would happen to your data if the company hosting it went out of business. One option is escrow if this is a big concern.
■ Moving data to and from a cloud provider – You need to establish how you would get your existing data into the cloud if volumes are large. You also need to establish how to get data back out of the cloud if you wanted to end the contract.
Resilience and risk One of the main concerns that a cloud strategy brings is that you need to understand the risks and how you mitigate them, as this business model brings different challenges. The largest of these is how you ensure that you will
always have a connection to the cloud service and how your customers will have access to a service you provide if it’s in the cloud. So let’s look at the layers involved. Physical – This should be something close to most
electricians’ hearts, as we’re talking cables. They could be copper or fi bre; probably both in larger setups, as copper installations still outweigh fi bre dramatically. You will have these delivered and managed by your internet service provider (ISP) or, if you have a private network infrastructure, your communication partner. So what options do you have to keep access available?
The fi rst is to install a cheaper (and slower) backup line, which will kick in if your primary line goes down. You may see this as an additional unwanted expense, but if you are embracing the cloud philosophy and moving critical business functions to the cloud, you need to ensure you always have access. You could rely on the SLA that comes with your connection, assuming you have one, but I doubt the cost of the compensation they will give will outweigh any loss of downtime. If you really want belt and braces, you could look to
triangulate lines and use different providers, but this will hit the budget harder, so it really depends on the fi nancial effect of you losing a connection. Another useful and fairly cheap thing to do is put the
communications equipment such as routers on a small UPS, so your communications will still work if you have a power outage. That is only useful if your other systems can work without power, of course. Virtual – This is more around the service you are taking.
So what you need to know is what resilience your service provider has, which you should always check. For instance, are they using servers running in a data centre with high availability or is the server running in a basement somewhere? If you think about it, you do not see the hardware you are using, so you could be blissfully ignorant of what you are using and where it is. The SLA here is important, with many providers
offering 99.9 per cent uptime, which for most will be plenty good enough. That said, you have to be happy with the compensation and how quickly they guarantee to fi x problems if they do arise. Also, be aware that some companies exclude servicing and updates from the uptime analysis, as this is considered maintenance. It is also worth remembering that size and reputation
You will gain big wins from the fl exibility of being able to access the service from pretty much anywhere you have connectivity
does not guarantee anything either, as this year has seen signifi cant downtime to the offerings from Microsoft, Google, Amazon and BlackBerry (Research In Motion) to mention a few.
Security Once you move your data outside the protective environment of your own offi ce, how do you know that it will remain private and safe? The way costs are often kept low on cloud- based services is by living on what is called a ‘multi-tenanted server’. This means that you share one server with other customers, so you have to be sure there are safeguards in place to stop other customers seeing your data. One way around this is to pay for your own server, which is the original Rackspace cloud computing model. However, this may not provide you with a lower cost solution if cost reduction is what you are after. Then there is the concern about data being stolen by
bots or hackers, as once you open up the system for use externally, others also have the same path in if the right security is not in place. For example, in June this year the hotel chain Travelodge admitted that its customer database, stored on the cloud, had been hacked and that customer information had been compromised. Customers reported receiving spam email after booking with the company, so denting Travelodge’s credibility . For those of you that are really paranoid, you should be
aware that that in some cases your data can be requisitioned by a government if they have due cause. For instance, if you use a US-owned service provider, under the USA Patriot Act they have to hand over all your data if requested to do so by the US Federal Government. Hopefully this would not be a major problem, but we mention it so that you are aware. So what can you do? At one end of the scale you could
encrypt all data you send to the cloud, but this will require a third party solution (which will be chargeable), and it will also put an overhead on the data transfer rates. You could look to have a strategy to only store non-confi dential data in the cloud, but this would require a hybrid solution, as you would need to keep all your confi dential data on premise. Again, the risk is something you have to be happy with before handing over your valuable data. If, after weighing up the above, you decide that cloud
is right for you, you should always talk to some existing customers. Ideally, if you can, try and establish who is using the system you are interested in without being given the information in the form of a reference. That way you may get you a more honest answer, as companies seldom pick reference sites that they think will give you negative feedback.
Cloud solutions As we’ve already said, there are many different solutions that can live in the cloud, but we have listed some of the most popular ones below. Email hosting – This is an ideal application to put
in the cloud, as long as you do not want to have close integration with on-premise applications. At the free end, you have Hotmail and Gmail, but there are also commercially-hosted solutions that offer the same facilities that an on-premise solution would give. These
January 2012 ECA Today 49
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