Cloud Computing. You Are Already There

 One of the hot topics in IT environments in the past few years has been the move to the cloud for computing services.  Whether it is running your office suite on hosted workstations (Office 365) or using a hosted server in a data centre to run your network you could already be in the cloud.  

Still, for many SMB and mid sized companies the cloud is a confusing and apparently risky venture which they are not sure they should consider.  They are afraid to lose control of their data and operations.  There are real concerns in moving to the cloud and understanding how to do so is an important consideration.

What many companies don't realize is they may already be using the cloud but are just not aware that the applications they are running are defined as cloud based apps.  Examples.

• Online banking for account management, cash flow checking and payment processing.  Not too many personal or business banking operations are without at least some part of their interactions being done on financial institutions' online systems.  This is an early implementation cloud application which most people take for granted today.

• Online payroll services like Ceridian and others.  Many SMB and medium sized businesses use an online system to process and disburse their payroll to their employees, manage remittances, and deductions.

• Online email accounts.  Hosted email is one of the first areas that many companies work with when they enter the email game.  Often the service is provided by their ISP (Internet service provider).  As they develop more sophistication they might use hosted Microsoft Exchange or other email/calendaring systems like Google Calendar and Gmail.  

• Online Customer Relationship Management systems (CRM).  The grand daddy of these is Salesforce.com and all of its offshoots.  There are thousands of companies which now use this platform to manage client interactions and data.  Of course there are many others with relative levels of sophisication, such as Sugar CRM, AddressTwo, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, etc.   An online search for hosted CRM applications yields over 1.4 million hits so it is easy to see this is a popular area of interest.

• File sharing and photo sites.  Another category of commonly used applications which are in the cloud, offer the means to store, share and access documents and files from multiple locations.  These include Dropbox, Box, Evernote, Microsoft Live, Google Apps like Picassa, and many others which have become popular.  If you buy a new tablet, laptop, smart phone or other devices you will invariably be offered the means to share data and files from that device through a cloud based storage application.  In many cases the size of the FREE storage exceeds what people use on their primary computers.

It would be quite unusual that any active internet user has not taken advantage of some cloud based application.  Think of Facebook, Twitter, and other popular social media sites and you understand that you are operating in the cloud.

A cloud based network is something different

When consideration is given to a cloud based commercial network system there are many considerations which are different from the use of the applications covered above.  

One of the primary considerations is the volume of transactions which a network handles on an on going basis.  Busy networks handle thousands of individual commands and transactions continuously through out a working day.  Data connections, applications opens, file storages, emails opened, written and sent, production workflows routed, accounting entries, reports compiled, printed and disseminated.  These are all part of the daily flow of information that is running through a network.  

Moving some or all of these activities into a cloud environment takes careful design, understanding and ongoing management.  Sometimes the impetus to go cloud is driven by a single application or area of interest like CRM.  These types of implementations can work simply because they are focussed on single activity streams and users learn the new tool without really worrying about where it resides.

When it comes to moving all applications, server processes and primary infrastructure to the cloud the impacts are much greater and take more understanding, training and design to ensure that the processes move freely without communication bottlenecks.

The cloud can offer substantial flexibility for a business if the design is sorted out carefully, but the single point of failure (a problem in any IT design) is often the internet connection and pipe.  When substantial cloud operations are considered then the connection point(s) must be considered so that your operations do not get stopped because of a loss of connectivity.  In a traditional network a lot of effort is used to protect from this happening by building in server protection, backup, and redundancy.  Similar issues must be addressed in a cloud design including the need for constant and adequate connectivity.

A cloud system moves many of the concerns about hardware, application maintenance and server maintenance out of the onsite premise and into the data centre.  In many cases different applications might be running from different sources.  Co-ordinatiing how these will interact and be maintained is an important part of the cloud system design.  It takes a solid understanding of the IT environment to be able to accomplish this well.  Failure to do so can lead to confusion and disruption.

In many instances a hybrid model will develop where some activity and data processing will continue to be performed on premise and some will be moved out to a remote data centre.  Building the tools to manage these types of installations takes a detailed knowledge of systems design and your IT professional is a critical resource in making it happen correctly and successfully.

How cloudy are your IT operations?  Do you anticipate that level growing?

    

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