CLOUD COMPUTING
The cloud – a key business IT component Linking cloud and network By Steve Palmer, Director of Product Marketing, Azzurri Communications
The distributed and offsite nature of cloud computing makes it a primary candidate for taking a pivotal role in an organisation’s business continuity planning.
But as good as the cloud is for this
purpose, businesses should be aware that the technology adds another element of risk to the equation that must be mitigated first, especially if you are considering the cloud as a key component of your business continuity strategy. Whenever an organisation’s
Steve Palmer explains how the cloud is central to modern businesses…
business-critical applications and data are moved offsite, the organisation’s network connection not only comes under greater strain, but its reliability becomes critical as well. In fact, with cloud computing as part of a business continuity strategy,
your network becomes the most critical single component of your organisation’s entire business continuity infrastructure. If you build a great cloud around a poor network, you may as well not bother. The organisation’s network must
therefore be ‘cloud-ready’ before the cloud can play any meaningful role in business continuity. So what are the key components of a
cloud-ready network? We consider a network to be cloud
ready if it incorporates the following components: A secure and scalable converged
network that is centrally managed: The cloud relies on a robust network infrastructure that is dynamic, secure, scalable and distributed, and can be
monitored and managed centrally. The network should also be a
converged network i.e. all types of traffic - voice, data, video and mobile - should be managed efficiently within the same network. Built in scalability and redundancy:
Scalability to manage the peaks in demand that come from using the cloud, and redundancy in order to keep the lights on if one aspect of the network falls down. A network that is built in this way will also operate on a range of different access technologies (DSL, fibre, WiFi, cellular etc.) in order to further minimise risk.
Virtualised network With virtualisation, a single `best-
Linking IT resources pays dividends 26 NETCOMMS europe Volume IV Issue 3 2014
www.netcommseurope.com
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