Archive for June 14th, 2013

Do All Roads Lead to the Cloud?

June 14th, 2013

A change is occurring in today’s data center environment.Similar to the past emergence of client/server computing, storageconsolidation, and server virtualization, the next big shift for the data center of tomorrow appears to begin with cloud computing. How do we know cloud computing is destined to be more than just the latest marketing message promoted by companies to convince you to buy more of their services? Three points from the world of public clouds give credence to the growing importance of cloud computing:

  1.  Popular consumer cloud services with downloadable apps like iTunes, Google Mail™, and even Netflix are good examples of how easy it has become to purchase, use, or access just the items, infrastructure, and services you want from an easy self-service, Web-based interface. How many workers and executives in your company today not only use these services themselves but also compare why it’s so much harder and more expensive to access and use their own internal IT systems?
  2. Business-oriented public cloud services, such as CRM-focused Salesforce.com or payroll processing apps from companies like ADP and PayCom, have allowed many companies using these services to achieve greater success and cost savings by outsourcing from the cloud. Early successful applications like these accessed from a public cloud infrastructure tend to fall into the categories of software as a service (SaaS).
  3. Surprisingly low-cost, scalable and agile, cloud-based Web services are now available for things like block storage, database platforms, and virtual server platforms. These tend to fall in the category of infrastructure as a service (IaaS) or, to a lesser degree, platform as a service (PaaS). Popular examples of IaaS come from cloud vendors like Google, or Amazon web services.

Public clouds offer great promise to consumers and business users alike. Yet, how does that translate into the need to develop a cloud platform behind the firewall of your current IT data center? It’s no longer a question of whether or not you should move into cloud computing. The question becomes whether or not you should build your own  private cloud, buy into an existing cloud services from a third-party provider, or do something in between these two cases.

The cloud can solve a number of needs There’s no shortage of IT personal and cloud providers attempting to share the many benefits of cloud computing. In fact, many of these sources are specifically targeting the education of executives in companies just like yours. This is for good reason:  Cloud computing offers a number of operational, financial, and business benefits that your small business should be looking in to right now!