SELECTING THE BEST cloud solution based on these organisational needs and required business outcomes becomes slightly more challenging because there is no singular and agreed upon definition for cloud. Private, public, hybrid? Which is best? And even breaking it down further to consider colocation, managed hosting,
Cloud services
Looking at cloud services as a whole – they offer a host of benefits and, along with key supporting services, can form the basis of your company’s IT infrastructure. Putting some or all of your business process into the cloud creates excellent opportunities for innovation, agility and often, cost reduction. However, not all cloud solutions deliver the same quality of performance and range of services.
It is vital that companies define what they need to achieve before implementation in order to isolate the right overall solution for their specific needs, they should also ensure this covers service assurance and monitoring from the outset.
When considering the options, the best cloud solution should offer consistent high performance, responsiveness, capacity, security, compatibility, flexibility and guaranteed uptime. The provider should also be able to support your organisation in the migration to cloud by minimising costs and disruptions.
Again, selecting the most appropriate solution comes down to understanding your needs and expectations of that technology in helping you meet those needs.
Defining needs
Identifying an organisation’s data requirements should begin with an audit of the current business environment. This should take in to account factors, such as business objectives and challenges; operational structure and service methodology; current IT costs; active projects; and priority focus areas. An existing solution may also need to be replaced or integrated with the new offering. In this case the focus must be on minimising business risk and impact during the period of transition.
In addition, you must consider that an organisation is made up of numerous IT users who interact with data services in different ways, on different devices and often from different locations. It is important to understand the specific needs of all user groups, both now and in the future, and the impact that the implementation of any new service will have on them.
The ideal solution
Any organisation, regardless of its industry, volume of data generated, or infrastructure, requires a hosting service that is fit for purpose to provide scalability, flexibility and return on investment. Of course this is easier said than done. The challenge lies in finding exactly the right fit for your needs, especially if this has to combine multiple technologies and service stacks or if there is a requirement to operate across applications, platforms and locations alongside legacy systems. There are multiple options available to you; which is most suitable will depend on your immediate business needs but should also take into account the strategic requirements for the longer term.
Security
One of the main barriers of wider adoption of cloud is the issue of security. Is data secure? Is the data centre or network safe? Does my cloud provider have the proper credentials and experience to ensure this, and more than that, does it have the appropriate back-up and disaster recovery plans in place?
Overcoming concerns around security comes from properly understanding where your data is, what your cloud solution encompasses and implies a level of absolute trust in your cloud services provider. This of course leads in to the differences between private, public and hybrid cloud.
Private cloud is ideal for organisations, such as large financial institutions, who wish to keep greater control over their data and applications. The cloud infrastructure is therefore hosted within their company firewall and is maintained by their IT teams, which is one of the disadvantages of such a solution. Public cloud on the other hand is hosted over a publically accessible network – such as the internet – and cloud providers make applications, storage and solutions available over this network. The advantages are that the cloud provider covers the cost of the hardware and bandwidth making it relatively simple and cost-effective for organisations to set up. In addition, it is easy to scale up or down, as needed, and there are no wasted resources because often it is offered on a pay-as-you-go model.
Hybrid cloud then is the perfect mixture of both these options allowing organisations to gain benefit from the scalability and cost-effectiveness of public cloud without losing control over business critical applications and data.
Colocation and managed hosting
Within the realm of public cloud, two solutions on offer include colocation and managed hosting.
Colocation offers particular benefits for different use cases. In the short term it can be valuable as a staging service when migrating your data to a cloud or to other hosted services. In the medium term it can be used if certain aspects of your organisation are not ready to move to the cloud but need to be kept close to those services that have already made the move.
When considering colocation you should ensure that your selected provider can offer intelligent remote hands capabilities and has the right number of facilities that are both appropriately located and connected.
Managed hosting offers the best of both worlds – it provides a dedicated server that can be configured to suit your specific requirements and is managed and maintained by third party experts, so you don’t need to invest in internal resource. When evaluating managed hosting providers, it is important to look at factors, such as security, back up and connectivity.
Conclusion
Regardless of the solution chosen – private, public or hybrid cloud – successful deployment and use comes down to whether your needs will be met. The right cloud provider certainly has a role to play, in both determining these requirements and selecting and developing the most appropriate solution, and using that as a starting point will ultimately assist in making the right call.
