Technology continues to grow by leaps and bounds, especially when it involves information technology for businesses. Always needing to know the best solutions for their IT operations, businesses everywhere are looking for answers. In today's high-tech world, cloud computing is quickly gaining momentum as the best way to improve business operations and productivity. When it comes to IT support and managed IT services, cloud computing offers businesses many key advantages.
Telecommuting Services
With the popularity of mobile devices growing by leaps and bounds, more businesses than ever are now looking at telecommuting as a way to not only save money, but also allow their employees to work from home or handle aspects of the job while on the go. Cloud computing allows employees to easily access data on their mobile devices, and it also allows employers to more easily hire off-site workers. By doing so, operational costs are reduced since the employer does not need to provide a physical work location for employees.
Outsourcing Services
Cloud computing allows for additional savings by making outsourcing even easier. Business activities such as customer service can be outsourced offsite or even overseas, making this a much more cost-effective option. By not having to do in-house hiring and provide a work location, thousands and sometimes millions of dollars can be saved.
Access Control
One of the biggest advantages to cloud computing is the safety of data. With hackers and scammers everywhere, IT support is made safer and more secure through the use of cloud computing. Physical servers are constantly being targeted by criminals hoping to gain access to personal information of customers or confidential information from businesses, so it's imperative to have a secure system in place. Cloud computing provides peace of mind when it comes to managed IT services, making sure tighter security is in place and access to files, data and other information is made safer than ever.
Data Duplication
When physical servers need to be used for data duplication, costs can be extremely high. However, cloud computing can solve this problem by performing the same tasks using virtual servers rather than physical ones, saving a business additional money on their managed IT services. Many businesses need to have multiple copies of information available in order to keep business operations streamlined, so using cloud computing allows this to be accomplished for pennies on the dollar compared to more traditional methods.
Business Relocation
As today's business world is prone to change, many businesses decide to relocate due to business trends or to save money. For businesses using traditional servers, relocation can be expensive as well as time-consuming. However, with cloud computing relocating becomes much easier and less expensive. Rather than taking time to set up new servers and other IT equipment, a business can instead relocate and almost immediately pick up right where it left off at its previous location.
With all of these reasons, it's no wonder cloud computing has achieved its current level of popularity. Keeping data safer, lowering costs and making business operations easier than ever before are just a few of the many reasons smart businesses everywhere are making cloud computing their first choice.
Having a disaster recovery plan (DRP) in place is essential to the survival of all businesses. Without a DRP, businesses are subject to the loss of data, revenue, and customer base during a disaster or downtime, which can be catastrophic. Many different DRP options exist, such as adjusting your in-house infrastructure, backing up data through a secure cloud hosting service, and adding redundancies to your servers so that there is little to no downtime in the event of an unforeseen circumstance. By having a proper DRP, you can ensure that your data is safe and your business will continue to operate even amidst a disaster.
Cloud computing technology spread around the globe rapidly and its adoption introduced different types of innovation in business environment. However, ever since the buzz around cloud-based tech solutions has started, the world’s eyes were set upon potential problems.
Over the last few years, the top concern for companies planning to move to the cloud has been security but as the cloud develops, new issues emerge. The recent survey carried out by Internap Network Services Corporation revealed some fresh pieces of information related to public cloud infrastructure. The survey polled almost 250 Internet infrastructure decision makers worldwide to give us a new insight into the state of public cloud adoption and usage.
Security is still a top concern
Just like many other surveys did over the last several years, Internap confirmed that modern businesses (unjustifiably) fear security threats in the cloud. Even though only 15% of companies that already use cloud services regarded security as a challenge, 40% of those that still haven’t adopted the cloud find security a major concern. These digits point out that security risks may be highly overestimated, considering the fact that most organizations that actually use the cloud don’t experience major problems in this respect.
Performance issues on the rise
While security remains the top concern for organizations that are not using cloud services, performance seems to be a major problem for those that do. The survey reports that 30% of cloud-wise organizations faced performance issues, along with 59% of those that use the cloud to host big data applications. In reference to this issue, Gopala Tumuluri from Internap notes:
“The survey data clearly indicates that big data applications – such as those that enable personalization and targeting through customer insights, social analytics and location mapping – are pushing the performance limits of virtual public cloud environments at price-points that don’t make business sense”.
Public cloud and virtualization
Among other things, the survey revealed that an important number of organizations (66%) mistakenly relate virtualization to public cloud. Most respondents have cited virtualization as “a defining characteristic of the cloud” which confirms that they still have a lot to learn about these innovative technologies. Namely, public clouds don’t have much to do with virtualization, even though they may share some similar features. Therefore, it is clear that despite the buzz surrounding the cloud for years, its definition remains vague to both companies that use it and those that don’t.
Conclusions
Public cloud systems are now widely used in companies of all sizes and they certainly represent one of the most efficient forms of IT infrastructure innovation. Infant trend as it is, cloud computing may still appear confusing, which is why companies are likely to have some impossible expectations from it. Here security is obviously an important yet overestimated factor, while virtualization is obviously not well understood. The findings of the survey help general public get a better insight into predominant issues in the cloud, and it’s up to individual organizations to develop their own strategies with cloud-based systems.
Author Bio:
Leana Thorne is a devoted blogger and a regular contributor to several tech blogs. She enjoys exploring new internet technologies and sharing newly found information – currently about cloud and reseller hosting and is always happy to be of help.
Even though cloud computing is becoming increasingly popular solution for businesses and individuals alike, and even though a lot of people are using it in some form, quite often without even being aware of that, there are still a lot of those who are only superficially acquainted with the term. Cloud computing has been with us for a while, and during that time, several distinct types of clouds have been formulated, so this article will try and summarize the most important points regarding each of them.
Public
Public clouds are perhaps the most common type of this service out there and one that is most accessible and convenient for individual users, which is not to say that business can’t make great use of them. Any kind of cloud service that is offered from a single provider to numerous users, with hardware and software being owned by the provider can be considered a public cloud. In this kind of setup you are simply renting the services or resources, without having any kind of control over the platform itself. Public clouds can offer storage, web based applications, or a number of other services to their users, according to the one to many principle, which is to say all users are getting the same application, for instance, with the only difference being in their contract with the provider – a number of authorized users, limitations on application features and similar.
Scalability of this kind of service, combined with the fact that users don’t have to own expensive hardware, make this setup extremely cost effective for businesses, but public cloud systems are still being plagued by chinks in their armor, which is to say security issues.
Private
Private cloud setups are mostly used by large corporations that require absolute control over their cloud, as well as an increased level of security. The corporation in question can decide to purchase the necessary hardware, or simply host their cloud with an external provider, but most prefer the former solutions, as the investment in hardware is more than justified by the additional increase in control that it affords. The cloud is only used by the corporation, and is completely isolated from other clouds, making it much more secure.
Hybrid
As can be inferred from its name, hybrid clouds are a combination of a private cloud with a public one. This allows the user to have an adequate level of control and security, but also to use the resources of a public cloud. This affords for great flexibility, as you can always limit the integration of the two clouds to perfectly suit your needs. Just like private clouds, you do need expert IT staff capable of maintaining the private cloud and the link with the public one.
Community
This term describes clusters of private clouds that remain separate on one level, but have a joint hub. This kind of setup is mostly used by related organizations that need access to the same kind of resources, but that have to stay separate. One of the examples of this kind of setup are different government organizations which need to be able to function individually, but which can also use a hub for the synchronization of their data and resources. Image Credit: hin255
Author Bio:
Olivia Still is a blogger, technivore, cloud computing enthusiast, and online marketing consultant for a number of Australian companies. Currently exploring the possibilities of virtual private server.
Data storage and backup is vital to the smooth and efficient running of any business, but a lot of companies and IT managers make a number of routine mistakes when it comes to backing up data. Key among these is the propensity to use complicated backup systems that require constant management. The cost of maintaining a dedicated staff solely for the purpose of protecting your data systems can become expensive. However, it is not absolutely necessary to back up your data systems onsite. The runaway train of technological innovation has made it possible to safely back up your data without needing to resort to multiple pieces of storage hardware. Cloud backup services have a number of advantages over more traditional backup systems, including safe and reliable data encryption and the ability to sync your data to both mobile and web devices. With easy access and a lower overhead, Cloud backup services are undeniably the best solution for all your data storage needs.
Created by Metiix. Metiix specializes in accelerated data recovery.
By 2016 two-thirds all workloads will be processed in the cloud, which is a two-fold increase on the number on workloads per installed cloud server in 2011. Better make sure you’re getting your work done on time and in budget because your world is going to be no longer private!
For those of you who don’t know what an Exabyte is, it’s equivalent to 1 billion gigabytes and currently businesses around the world use 268 Exabyte’s when using the cloud. That’s an increase from 124 in 2011 and is expected to increase more than double to 596 Exabyte’s by 2016! That is a hell of a bite!
Cloud usage is currently measured at 39% in the public cloud such as google drive, 34% is being used in the private cloud which are used by businesses internally and 27% in the hybrid cloud which is where both the clouds are bound together whilst remaining unique entities. Hybrid cloud provides the flexibility of in house applications with the fault tolerance and scalability of cloud based services.
The value of the cloud services are on the up! They are currently worth $117bn and is projected to increase around $100bn to $220bn with the public cloud alone expected to worth around $110bn in 2016. There’s a lot of money in things that don’t really exist!
Have a look through our Infographic for more great facts!
This infographic has been supplied by the guys at CWCS.
![The Future Of The Cloud [Infographic]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_tQO8JhGQXGjtibzGcuo_B_dxLSth2h1FemlKiu4ozSK9iFxMnrhI3XqQJGCYvvR1RCi3I-TDi2F85PIcQPXy9T3oGrkar6XEzRTSpkYsm2DbU=s0-d "The Future Of The Cloud [Infographic]")
