Feature: Enterprise & Innovation Innovation
Cloud in the
By Leanne Robinson (pictured), Account Manager, DB Systel UK Limited.
What is a Public Cloud? Many people use Public Cloud computing services in their personal life, be it backing up their iPhone to Apple iCloud or uploading and sharing holiday photographs using Dropbox or Microsoft OneDrive. Public Cloud computing is essentially a shared set of IT
resources that can be rented, usually within minutes, and which are accessed over the internet. You pay as you go meaning that capital costs are either greatly reduced or eliminated and as you are only paying for what you use there are opportunities to reduce your operational costs as well. While some organisation include migration to the Cloud
as part of their business and innovation strategy many have not yet considered how to utilise Cloud computing to add value and provide competitive advantage to their business. There are many different types of Cloud services, the most common are known:
Infrastructure-as-a-Service Where you are provided with a server, storage and networking just like you might use currently on your own premises and this all accessed over the internet.
Platform-as-a-Service This is most often used by those who write their own software. With Platform-as-a-Service you don’t have to worry about managing servers or ‘infrastructure’ and you just upload your own computer code to the Cloud provider to run.
Software-as-a-Service Where you use software produced by other organisations, for example Microsoft Office 365, but rather than installing this on your own servers you access the software over the internet and you are not responsible for the platform that the software is running on.
Why should I migrate to the Cloud? Often the first reason that any organisation considers migrating to the Cloud is to reduce cost and as already discussed there are opportunities here for both capital and operational cost savings. However, the opportunities that cloud computing provides extends beyond cost saving. For example:
Focus on you core business rather than IT In the Cloud you have fewer responsibilities to maintain your IT resources so rather than maintaining infrastructure your staff are free to focus on activities that generate value for your core business.
Respond quickly to changes in your business environment Cloud computing enables you to be more reactive when business opportunities present themselves. In the past if you needed a new server to support new or growing business you were likely to have to wait weeks or even months for it to be ordered, delivered and configured. In the cloud a new server can be provisioned in minutes with just a few clicks of a website. This means you now can innovate rapidly and respond quickly to changing business conditions.
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Experiment without the risk of a high cost of failure Not all new ideas work out and many businesses decide not to innovate as the financial impact of getting something wrong is too high. In the Cloud you can create your IT resources to build and test your ideas - and if it doesn’t work, delete them again while only paying for the time that your cloud services were running.
Greater Security Some businesses worry that their data may not be as secure in the Cloud and the risk of a data breach (and resulting bad publicity and potential financial penalties) is considered too great a risk. However, it is a myth that data is more secure when it is stored on your own premises. Cloud providers, such as Amazon Web Services, build in security controls at every layer of their service, resulting in a strengthened security position helping to protect your data from potential threats.
Business continuity and disaster recovery Whereas most organisations wouldn’t think twice about insuring their business premises, they often forego protecting themselves against IT failure as the cost of replicating their infrastructure is too high. The consequence is that when the inevitable happens and IT services are down they suffer extended outages, lost business and a damaged reputation. Using Cloud services, you can setup standby IT, ready to go in the event of a failure and this can be done at low or even no cost.
How to get started? Cloud services can be purchased either directly through a Public Cloud Computing provider such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure or Google Cloud Platform, or by engaging a Cloud Managed Services Provider who can manage your Cloud services on your behalf. There is a lot of information out there to help you get
started but if you don’t know where to start, a Cloud consultant’s time is likely to accelerate your journey to the Cloud and help you avoid making any mistakes while you’re getting started.
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