Cloud Computing is the big buzz word out there for businesses at the moment and is growing rapidly.
But….
Is Cloud Computing right for you…….. and your business?
This is what I want to explore with you today, by providing you with the information, enabling you to make a confident decision.
To answer this question, we must first examine the pros and cons of cloud computing; no technology or service is perfect, but cloud computing posses many more benefits than the traditional IT model we all know. So let’s examine this in more detail.
Firstly we will look at the pros and cons of cloud computing, then we’ll analyse what types of users and businesses who really benefit most from this global shift.
Then, and only then should you consider cloud computing, and whether this is the right fit for you and your business!
To start with I would suggest you watch our Cloud Computing video. This demonstrates how cloud computing works, and is a fantastic starting point, helping you visualise this complex and evolving technology.
Understanding Cloud Computing Video (click on the play button)
The Pros and Cons of Cloud Computing
As with any cutting edge technology, Cloud Computing can be somewhat confusing to understand. It’s important for you to grasp the ‘pros and cons’ as this will enable you to minimise potential risks and fully understand how cloud computing can add value to both you, your staff and customers.
Cloud Computing Advantages
Let’s have a look at a few of the many advantages Cloud Computing has to offer:
Reduced Cost for User Desktops
I will start with trying to quantify the financial advantage: You will no longer require a powerful desktop computer(s), this in-turn means you will no longer require regular and expensive upgrades when running a cloud computing, or a hosted desktop solution.
This is quite simple to understand as all your data, applications and information are running from the Cloud, and not your local desktop. This means you no longer require the hard drive space or large amounts of memory to process your applications. In essence, your desktop machine has now become “dumb”. No work is being processed from your machine anymore; it means you can buy terminals with reduced memory, hard drive space, processing power – giving them the name “dumb terminals” or “thin clients”.
These devices don’t even require operating systems such as Windows XP or Windows 7, backup software or Anti-Virus (AV), because there is no requirement locally…. This is all managed in the Cloud and no longer has to be your concern.
Not only does this mean less hassle and inherent downtime, but considerable savings, not to mention the vast reduction in electricity consumption!
Improved Performance
I will now elaborate further on the user’s desktop experience: Understanding that the local desktop doesn’t have to run memory intensive applications, or perform processing hogging tasks, whilst storing gigabytes and gigabytes of data leads to massive increases in performance.
The local desktops resources are no longer being utilised, freeing the machine’s performance up immeasurably.
This allows your desktop to not only boot up quicker, but also run faster and work more effectively, because there is nothing hogging up the memory or tasks to perform, other than a connection to run the cloud.
Vastly Reduced Capital Expenditure Costs
With no requirements for servers on-site, you remove the up-front costs of running and maintaining hardware on-site. Instead of investing in large up-front costs that these powerful servers cost, your internal IT staff or resource can harness the power of cloud computing to replace the role of the server.
This provides major financial gains for up-front costs (capital expenditure), especially as most companies procure servers with a 3 – 5 year plan, buying a server which will be heavily under-utilised (paying for resources not being used) to ensure it lasts, then sweating that asset out as long as possible to improve your return on investment. Then the server is under performing, because the resources are being over utilised (not enough power or resource to perform its role).
Cloud Computing is scalable, this means you only pay for what you use, whether you grow or shrink as a business.
This provides large financial savings, primarily because you’re only paying a subscription on a service that truly gives you control of your costs, on a month to month basis.
As we all know business changes so quickly that we all need to be able to adapt to changes as quickly as possible, and with minimum cost.
Fewer Maintenance Issues
With Cloud Computing, you no longer have servers on-site to maintain, and no applications to manage on either the desktops or servers, with no more storage requirements or data to backups to worry about.
Cloud computing almost eliminates the requirements for any on-site resources. In effect you now have no IT assets to manage.
Reduced Software Costs
Running software and maintaining it is far simpler in the cloud. Software is now paid for on a subscription basis, and only for the users that require it.
There is no need to procure expensive operating systems, or purchase separate applications for each individual computer. Instead, applications are published out to the relevant users over the cloud as and when they are required.
Your IT staff are subsequently saved the hassle of installing and maintaining these applications on every desktop in the organisation and freed up for more productive use of their time.
Many cloud companies provide some of the main applications as part of their service. For instance Sagari will provide you the very latest Microsoft Office suite as part of our delivery, and then allow you to install any other applications onto your cloud, offering you the flexibility to have your own bespoke software solution in line with current business needs.
Google apps provide an element of their applications for free, but they remove the flexibility of installing your own applications. This depends on your requirements, and on which you choose, also taking into account your budgets etc.
Instant Software Updates
Providing applications over the cloud means you are always going to receive the latest versions of software, therefore providing your staff with the very latest features and benefits.
Hosted applications means that any upgrades, patches and subsequent management of software, are the sole responsibility of the vendor.
You will never have to worry about expensive software upgrades, or legacy applications that no one knows how to manage.
Increased Computing Power
When utilising cloud computing, you have the power of the entire cloud (public cloud), or infrastructure within a datacentre (private cloud) at your disposal.
Traditional desktop computing means your PC can only perform as well as the resources within it (memory, processor).
Cloud computing will allow your staff to perform supercomputing tasks on their desktop, by harnessing the power of 100’s or 1000’s of super-computers. Traditional desktop computing obviously restricts you from doing this
Unlimited Storage Capacity
The beauty of cloud computing is its scalability. No longer do you have to worry about your hard drive running out of space and the hassle of replacing the drive, or worse, the hard drive running out of space where your operating system is stored, and the machine not booting anymore.
Cloud computing scales as your users and business requires, providing you endless amount of data to use and share.
Improved Data Safety
Anyone who has lost their data understands how important it is to have a good backup policy in place. Many businesses though still neglect to test the validity of their data and backup procedures.
Cloud computing removes the need to worry about this anymore, because your data is backed up continuously across multiple storage devices (public cloud), or storage area networks (private clouds).
If your machine dies, all you have to do is get to another machine with an internet connection and log back on………. That’s it.
Improved Compatibility between Operating Systems
In a world where MACs and Linux are entering the business space more and more, it is important that users can share data between each other.
Cloud computing bridges the gap that was formally a difficult task to accomplish, allowing your staff to share documents between any operating system. In the cloud, the data matters, not the operating system.
Improved Document Format Compatibility
With traditional desktop computing, applications are installed on each individual machine, which means it is very common for compatibility issues owing to one or many users in the same organisation using a slightly different version of the same application as another.
A good example of this is the Microsoft Office suite, when the change of the file format occurred from .docx in Office 2007, to .doc in Office 2003.
Cloud computing eliminates compatibility issues because everyone will be connecting to one machine and accessing one version of each application.
Easier Group Collaboration
This is one of biggest advantages of cloud computing. Being able to share documents and collaborate effectively with all relevant teams on the same project. Before cloud computing, you had to email documents, or back the data up onto a drive and then send to the relevant users.
With cloud computing you can share any information to anyone in the world, changes to documents are seen in real-time, and multiple users can work on the same document sequentially.
The advantages of sharing data and group collaboration on this scale is incredible. It means just some of the following efficiencies can be realised:
• Quickly share documents
• Work on the same document sequentially
• Provide versioning control of documents
• Complete group projects across different geographical locations
• Groups don’t need to reside in a single location
Universal Access to Documents
This follows on from group collaboration, but cloud computing also means you can be working on a document in your office, and rather than saving the document and putting on a pen drive to upload at home, you can just go home and log onto your hosted desktop, and carry on from the point you left off.
This is the amazing flexibility that cloud computing brings. Your documents are instantly available from any machine with an internet connection.
Latest Version Availability
This one is positive for organisations at so many levels…… Have you ever edited a document at home, gone into the office the next day, only to find that it is the out-dated version?
When accessing your documents on the cloud you will always find the latest version of the document, saving you the frustrations of having to go over old work.
Removes the Tether to Specific Devices
Not being bound to a single device or location is by far the biggest cloud computing advantage. Working from the cloud means you can now access your information from any device, and in any location.
For example, if your working on a document and go abroad. You can access everything from another computer in another country. I’m sure you’ll agree this provides the ultimate flexibility for you and your business.
This is not just to a PC or Laptop, but also through any portable device such as an iPad or any commercial Smart Phone. Your applications and data follow you no matter where you are, what device you’re on, or what operating system you use.
You don’t have to worry about syncing data anymore or running special applications to convert data to different platforms, or onto a specific format etc.
Cloud computing simplifies accessing your information for you and your staff.
Cloud Computing Disadvantages
We don’t live in a perfect world unfortunately, which means Cloud computing does come with some disadvantages.
Although Cloud has many more benefits over a traditional desktop solution. The cloud is not going to be right for every business.
Let me explain what these disadvantages are so you can make an informed decision for your business.
Requires a Constant Connection
This is the biggest single factor that hinders the cloud e.g. the ‘internet connection.’ By basic definition Cloud Computing’s means ‘the internet’ e.g. without it or a connection to it, you can not access your data and applications.
There is however ways to sync data from the Cloud to your local PC, and its possible for you to work offline and upload the documents to the cloud when you are back online again!
If your place of business is in an area that suffers intermittent internet connections, or is extremely expensive to provide leased lines (direct connections) because your business is away from a commercial hub geographically, then cloud computing might not be the best decision for your business.
The cloud relies on good internet connections, because your information is being streamed to your device(s). For smaller companies of up to 5 users, you can generally get away with a standard broadband connection (adsl), but for larger businesses, you require improved broadband solutions such as SDSL or leased lines – the truth is most businesses already have these circuits due to the commercial importance that good circuit connections have.
Low Speed Connections
Running a cloud service for your business on a low speed broadband, with latency (delays on the line), will affect the performance of your cloud and access to your information.
Web-based applications often require a lot of bandwidth to download a document for example, but more importantly it is your up-load speed that’s critical. Most broadband providers never deliver the bandwidth they promise, unless you pay a little more money for guaranteed speeds.
Analysing your network connection is the fist thing we audit, before delivering a cloud service, without the bandwidth for your business; your cloud would be less efficient.
We offer all the advice and support to ensure you have a sufficient network in place before migrating to a cloud solution.
Can Be Slow
Believe it or not, even on a fast internet connection, particular web based applications or graphical based applications can be slower than running on your local machine, although this is not a rule of thumb and is rare.
This especially effects heavy graphic/data usage such as architects/designers Graphic companies for example, we do not promote a fully steamed environment for these organisations Instead we would suggest a hybrid cloud – this means we would host an element of your environment, such as your email and your web sites, whilst managing your local applications onsite.
In conclusion there are many options available, and all these are discussed following Sagari’s thorough consulting and audit service, ensuring we bring you and your business across to the cloud as seamlessly as possible.
Features Might Be Limited
If you want to use free cloud computing solutions such as Google Apps or Zoho, you must understand their limitations, and what can truly be achieved with each application.
For example, Google’s desktop publishing tool, compared to the feature rich Microsoft Word are currently worlds apart.
If you only require basic software, Google Apps could be a perfect solution for you, but if you are like most organisations using Microsoft Office applications already this is essential.
There is no doubt that other software vendors will soon be competing with Microsoft on a much more even playing field, and no doubt be catching up in the future.
Sagari provide the latest Microsoft Office 2010 Professional as part of every hosted desktop and do not restrict you from any of the features and benefits provided.
Stored Data Might Not Be Secure
Delivering data and software services over the Cloud does have inherent security risks, which are important to understand….. The irony is your data is most likely far safer in the cloud than in your own office!
There are different types of clouds which bare a number of risks. For instance, public clouds means your data and applications are stored on a server(s) somewhere out in the cloud, but no one could tell you where this data is, or how to retrieve it in the event of a hardware crash.
Cloud companies providing this service need to be audited fully, and you need to fully understand how their disaster recovery procedures work, also their backup processes should the unfortunate hardware failure ever occur.
I would suggest not only a visit to their offices to meet support staff, but try and get some customer references and arrange a site visit.. A thorough understanding of their disaster recovery and backup process really is a given.
You must be confident that your business critical data is being managed to the very highest levels.
Private Clouds are far safer, mainly because it is all managed in a secure datacentre where someone can physically put their hand on your data, but it is vital you check everything for your own due-diligence. Well managed Private Clouds and data centres come with a plethora or accreditations you can look into.
Sagari provide private Clouds only, and run our services in 3 of the most prolific datacentres in the UK. We are in the process of implementing a 4th which I will detail at another time. We have recently had 10 month due diligence completed by a leading law firm, who are more than happy to backup all the claims we make about our business structure, services and accreditations etc.
I will be running a blog on how to choose the right Cloud Partner and preparing for the cloud another time.
The next blog will be talking about whom benefits from the cloud, which I will discuss more about collaborators, road warriors, adding value and much more…
I look forward to the next blog.
Many Thanks
Steven John – The Sagari Team