Welcome to Part 3 of Preparing you for Cloud Computing
Welcome back to the final part of the preparing you for cloud computing blog series. We really hope that you have found this extremely interesting, and provides you enough information to help you get started with planning your cloud computing project.
8. Do you have mobile workers?
Running a mobile workforce will certainly impact the decisions you make, when choosing a hosted service solution.
If your mobile workforce are bound to the road, travelling for most of their working day, then this will impact your decision on the cloud computing platform you choose. Or you will certainly need to understand how you can mix a cloud platform with offline feature sets.
Although there are many 3rd party applications which provide solutions for offline workers, or staff with a poor connection.
You could have a hosted desktop with an offline file storage system implemented such as hyperdrive or even a 3d party tool which syn’cs your data locally to your laptop, so when you are out of an area with a stable internet connection, you can still access your data locally from your laptop. When you are back to a reliable internet connection, that data is then sync’d back.
How to build your platform is beyond the scope of this blog, but we will running an article on web hosted applications and building cloud platforms for different businesses later on in the year
Most mobile workers rely heavily on their Blackberry devices, IPhone’s, Androids etc. Which means you need to ensure you partner with a reliable and stable cloud computing hosting provider
The email features and functions needs to allow the minimum of providing, shared calendars and events, shared contacts, distribution lists and can push your emails to you as they are send and received in real time.
Most cloud computing providers offer additional services as part of the solution, including anti-spam, email anti-virus, outlook web access, archiving and backup to name a few. Make sure you find out what these costs are as some providers trick you into thinking your getting a good deal, but then hit you with additional storage charges, services and add-ons. This adds on a significant amount of money when you have 100′s or 1000′s of mailboxes.
9. What security needs to be in place for your data?
If you are an FSA regulated business or organisation, or if you are driven by compliance and risk management. Then you need to ensure your data is hosted by a provider who adheres to all the highest security measures, compliance and industry standards.
With organisation that need this level of security, you will always have to ensure the cloud solution is a private cloud. This means your data is held and managed in a highly secure dedicated datacentre, that you can be provided access to. Private cloud, means your data will be separated away from other businesses completely and normally is encrypted to the highest level.
If you are audited for any reason, you need to ensure that you can provide access to your data and all the relevant due diligence you have completed, to show you have completed a comprehensive due dilligence process, before partnering with a cloud computing supplie
There are many other forms of compliance and security that is important, but is beyond this blog discussion. They include ISO27001, two-factor authentication, security clearance to name a few. We will discuss these on another time.
10. What file and folder permissions need to be in place?
Running a physical server in your office with Windows server, makes it easy to implement a file and folder permission system, utilising Windows in-built NTFS file structure. Depending on what cloud computing system you implement, will mean you need to consider how you will build your file structure.
If you move to a hosted desktop system, then this is straight forward to implement, but if you are looking at more cost effective solutions, or moving away from a windows based system could mean a number of changes.
For instance, if you use an online storage system such as Jungle Disk or Drop box. These do not utilise windows file and folder permissions, and have their own hierarchical systems for implementing security.
They might not provide you the level of security you require on your files and folder, or you might find it complicated to use. I would suggest you test the different solution so you can analyse which one will suite you best. Sometimes, cost is a deciding factor, but it might not provide the service you require.
These are all important factors to consider.
11. What network hardware do you have in place?
Due to the importance of your network, because all the hosted services are now running over the internet. You need to ensure that your network has been implemented well, and is not causing any latency or broadcasting problems.
What I mean by this is, if your network has been setup incorrectly and your hardware is cheap or poorly configured. Then you could be doing a disservice to the performance of your network without realising. When set-up correctly. Your network should be able to communicate using minimum traffic to pass information back and forth. If on the other hand it has been implemented without thought. Then you could be flooding your network with unnecessary traffic which will heavily impact the quality of your hosted services.
These are all relatively easy things to sort out, but generally require a network engineer to audit and analyse your network. They will then provide a report of what needs to be changed to optimise your network traffic.
12. What hardware are you going to use to connect to the cloud?
Moving to the cloud means you don’t necessarily need to run high end desktops and laptops anymore.
With cloud computing all the work is done from the cloud, which means you can replace your desktop (AKA fat clients) with new devices called thin clients or dumb terminals.
Thin clients are desktops without large processors and memory, or high capacity hard drives to store your data. This is because they are not running your applications anymore.
All they require is enough memory or flash RAM, to enable you to gain access to the internet. These devices generally cost a lot less and use a lot less power, saving you further money.
Furthermore, they don’t require operating systems and anti-virus on them and more importantly they don’t require much maintenance. These devices don’t have much work to do which means further cost savings.
13. Educating your staff?
No one likes change, so implementing a hosted solution means it is worth getting the buy in early from your staff, and demonstrate the benefits of moving to a hosted solution, and how it will help them do their job more efficiently.
14. Trailing Services
This is a great opportunity to see the solution in action, so you can see if the services are a good fit for your business. If you know the route you want to take, and have implemented many of the steps listed ready to run a cloud computing service, then this is a good chance to see if your cloud computing provider runs a stable solution.
15. Do your own due diligence
It is very easy to be blind sited by companies who perceive to provide an excellent service and solution. You need to do your own due diligence.
Firstly I would advise you to get 3 strong references, and preferably consider doing a site visit to some of the sites to see the solution in action.
You can visit their offices and to speak with their support staff to find out if they are the sort of company you would like to work with. Visiting the offices can generally provide a good insight into the type of Cloud Company they are and how they operate.
You can also visit the datacentres and internet exchanges where your data and hosted services will be hosted. This will demonstrate the level of security that is in place, and give you the opportunity to ask questions about the set-up.
You may have your own due diligence process already, but this is what many of our clients have done to gain confidence in Sagari before taking the leap.
16. How much disruption does moving to the cloud cause?
This is a difficult question to answer as it depends on a number of differentiating circumstances.
If your current physical hardware has been poorly managed, then this will affect your migration, because it will take more planning.
If you have ageing hardware and software then this can affect the migration, but shouldn’t cause too many problems. This relates back to planning early on with your application vendors to get this in place early.
All of the above can be minimised by planning carefully and by helping your cloud provider as much as possible.
Any reputable cloud provider would provide you an audit sheet of what they are going to do first, and then they would complete an on-site audit where they can compile a report.
The report would be provided back to the client with what needs to be completed (implementation plan), to bring the services up to a level that you can be migrated to a hosted service. This generally would be in the form of a statement of work, outlining the steps and timeframes.
The beauty of cloud computing is generally you can keep your old systems running, whilst testing your hosted platform alongside this, so it won’t affect you and your staff working. The only difficulty of this is email.
Email is by far the most difficult service to migrate seamlessly, as every client is different, and the service can not be run alongside each other easily. There are systems and services such as MigrationWizz, which is designed to help you migrate, but these come at a cost per head and don’t migrate everything over such as calendars, rules etc..
I hope this has made a well worth read, and provides you a good understanding of what needs to be done when planning a cloud computing migration.
Please feel free to email or contact us directly us directly if you want any further information relating to this 3 part blog on preparing for cloud computing. If you have a current cloud computing or hosted services project you would like to discuss further. Then please feel free to contact us directly, visit Sagari at www.sagari.co.uk or please call us on 01274 929371 .
Best regards
Steven John
Sagari Ltd
p.s. We would be more than happy to discuss your cloud computing project, or discuss an existing hosted services project you are