The Evolving Landscape of IT Managed Services

The business landscape today is vastly different from what it used to be a decade ago. Many CIOs and IT managers realize that the commercial backdrop is continually evolving and that a professional IT service provider can help mitigate risk, enhance agility and control costs. Most CIOs consider an IT partner as a value addition to their in-house team, since a professional IT managed service provider also helps reduce the complexity of an organisation's IT environment.

IT is no longer an overhead expense, it is a business transformation agent

Forces such as globalisation, consolidation and deregulation have driven organisations to realize that business transformation is a must to gain a competitive edge and to maximise shareholder value. Business leaders understand that IT is no longer an overhead expense. On the contrary, it is a business transformation agent that can drive high impact initiatives, which in turn create incredible business value.

IT budgets are scrutinised more than ever before

Today, CIOs and IT leaders understand that the business value of IT needs justification, and that they need to efficiently manage TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) and boost ROI (Return on Investment) on existing investments on technology.

Today, it is difficult to support a modern, global business with a traditional, in-house approach towards IT

Legacy IT infrastructure is simply not enough to face the fast-paced challenges posed by a modern business. Established managed service providers have the skills and experience that is required to serve global companies with world-class, innovative IT solutions that meet the unique business needs of the organisation. These managed service providers often take the responsibility of managing all third-party providers and create a total managed services solution by efficiently taking care of all client relationships.

Integration projects are no longer stand-alone or secluded

A decade ago, IT transformation projects were often secluded from management and operations. However, that is not the case today, as integration projects are no longer stand-alone, as companies understand that it is crucial to implement integration to realise the full value of their investment on technology.

Organisations rely on IT managed services providers to not only manage IT assets, personnel and processes, but also to mitigate risks

Until a couple of years back, organisations used to partner with managed service providers to exclusively manage technology assets, personnel and processes, but the scenario is different today as companies partner with IT service providers to mitigate risks that are associated with a change in the technology environment.

The IT landscape is continually evolving and IT managed service providers are considered as strategic tools and partners who can help boost business agility, conserve capital and control operational costs.

Is the Term Managed Services Over Used?

Managed Services - what does that mean? If I am a small business owner, what do managed computer services do for my business?

The trend in the small business computer space has been this push towards "managed services" over the past few years. Everybody wants to jump on the managed services bandwagon. Is this the magic pill that will save your small business practice? Trends are shifting toward software and hardware as services rather than products, but what does this mean to the owners of small businesses?

Managed Services in the small business computer space is really a service offering small business specialists are using to extend a level of service where they can better take care of small business technology needs. It offers a full-time computer help desk or IT department that allows the small business to focus on their business and leave the headaches associated with technology to their trusted solution provider.

The problem is that today's small business consultants and owners of small business computer shops are too focused on delivering this managed services offering and forgetting about the client's needs. I have attended conferences in the past three to four years where the same conversations are always occurring around how to compensate employees, how to bill, what services are offered and many more about how to the deliver the service. Why is this? Are we as computer consultants losing focus on what is important to our business?

I have always focused on what the client needs. However, is the market fully aware of what the client needs from a managed services approach to computer support? Do small businesses really want managed services? Everyone in the IT space is jumping on this bandwagon and believe they know what the client needs with managed services but have they forgotten to ask the client.

Managed services needs to be positioned to small business owners in such a manner that shows real benefit to a small business. The "managed services" terminology is a predictable expense for a small business. Their IT support can now become a consistent expense throughout the course of the year which lets a small business budget their IT support costs throughout the year.

Small Business today needs to be educated so that they understand what a managed services solution will do to benefit their business. The popular phrase that the your existing or prospective client will always ask, "what is in it for me" rings true in this technology dependent market. It is not about what is in it for the computer consulting firm-- always what is in it for the client. I am seeing that small business IT support firms are still too focused on what is in it for them, and losing focus on what is it for the client. The small business specialists that clearly understand how to meet the client's wants and needs, will always win.

The term "managed services" is over used. I have taken the approach that we are a Professional Services Organization and do not even the term, mention managed services to the end client. When you shift your mindset to offering a professional service and provide small business with a professional services offering, it doesn't matter if you bill hourly, monthly, annually-- it is about the services you offer and how you take care of your client.

The small business market is made up of four buying groups: stable, mass target, tipping and tipped. The tipped market is actively looking for a new solution to resolve their pain; these are the 3% of the market that are actively looking to replace their existing service offering. The tipping group can be tipped over to a new approach to help with their needs; these are the 7% of the small business market that can be persuaded to look into new offerings to better their business. The mass target is an approachable group that may not be aware they need a new solution. They are unaware that their IT systems are having challenges or specific areas are not even being looked after; 40% of your potential sales can come from this market. The stable market is not even looking; this is about 50% of today's small business market.

Small Business computer consultants need to concentrate on what is best for their clients. It is time to stop the over use of the term "managed services" and just take care of the client's needs. You can have the best managed services business, however, if you focus too much on your internal company needs and forget about the client needs, you will end up with a well planned managed services business, but no actual business.

What Is a Managed Service Provider?

A managed services provider is a company that manages services for another company. Basically, they are a company that takes care of outsourced services on a month-to-month basis, which is how they also receive their income. Many of these services are provided via the internet and cover such tasks as IT services, remote data backup, desktop and security monitoring, and technical assistance. It is also common for a managed services provider to also manage a company's web hosting and maintenance of their websites.

However, managed hosting is perhaps the most common function of many managed services provider. The provider bills the business they are providing the services for a fixed amount on a monthly basis. They provide IT services that would otherwise be provided in-house by existing or additional staff. They backup any data that is on the website and any data offered by customers visiting the website to benefit the business in case the website crashes. The customer data also allows the business to stay in touch with their customers. The managed services provider also continuously monitors the website in order to prevent security breaches. That way if there is a security breach, the managed services provider can rectify the issue right then and there. The managed services provider is also there to provide any technical assistance to the business or the customer if any issues come about with the web hosting.

It is obvious that a managed services provider can do a wide range of things for the business that the business would need an entire IT staff to do. Additional tasks that they perform include managed remote access, network monitoring, network management, scanning for vulnerabilities, firewall management, securing the e-mail and messaging system, tracking incidents, and server management. These are a few amongst the many tasks that would be required by the company that the company is outsourcing when hiring a managed services provider.

Benefits to the business

A managed services provider takes many tasks off of the hands of the business. In fact, the different payment models that managed services providers make available to the businesses that they serve is usually cheaper than having to hire one or two full-time employees to take care of these tasks or having existing employees add these tasks to their work loads. There may be times in which issues come about and those employees must focus on the managed hosting while putting their other job responsibilities on the backburner. However, some managed hosting operations are so large that it takes a number of employees to manage the system and everything that comes with it. This avoids having to pay higher salaries, additional salaries, training costs, and prevents staff members from being overworked.

Another benefit is that a managed services provider focuses on the task at hand because their job is to manage services for the business so that the business can focus on customer satisfaction, monitor costs better, save money by not having to manage their managed hosting themselves, protect vital information, and focus on making the applications satisfactory for the customer. They have no additional tasks other than focusing on the success of their client's managed hosting.

Overall benefits

So the overall benefits are quite obvious in terms of convenience and cost. What's really important is that the managed services provider is not consumed with other tasks because their job is to ensure the business they provide services for remains running smoothly in terms of their managed hosting. Successful managed hosting means the business can be more profitable and the consumer's view of their business will be one of trust and satisfaction.

What Is Cloud Computing? - 12 Facts Every Small to Medium Sized Business Owner Should Know

Background

In the last 3 years dramatic changes have been taking place in how business computing happens, especially in larger companies. Traditionally companies build their own IT infrastructure, buy expensive equipment and servers and install everything locally. They need to keep hardware running, software compliant while making sure that the information input and output actually meets company needs.

Things have changed. With the advent of Cloud Computing a company can have reliable and safe business computing delivered like a utility service. Today we no longer dig wells for water, or run our own generator for electricity. These services are available as a utility service. So too with IT, you can "buy" IT infrastructure as a service, pay for what you need, and focus on the business not the technology.

1.What is Cloud Computing?

Computing delivered over the internet like a utility service that can be accessed by any device that has internet connection. Computing horsepower is located and happens outside the company on external servers, so no computing hardware needs to be owned and operated by the company. In fact, a well-known market research company, Gartner, has estimated that by the end of 2012, 20% of all companies will own no IT assets! The move to the cloud is underway.

2.What would full Cloud Computing look like in my office?

Imagine your server room or server area gone, no more major capital expenditures on equipment and facilities. Imagine desktops that don't crash and hard drives that don't fail, but with the same user experience. Imagine a secure safe environment for your systems and data taken care of by experts not on your direct payroll for a flat monthly fee that covers everything at a lower cost than you currently pay. This is what Cloud Computing can look like NOW.

3.Why isn't everybody doing it?

Big companies have commonly been using Cloud Computing technology for a while now. Now smaller companies are increasingly changing to this way of running IT. Specialized managed IT companies are helping these smaller companies move their IT to the cloud and then run their IT efficiently - and this is accelerating the trend.

4.With Cloud Computing do you have to buy servers?

No. There is no cost burden of server ownership and therefore no expensive capital expenditure. You buy "server use" from a virtual server created for you in an external data center and pay for it by means of a simple monthly fee.

5.Company specific software

In a Cloud Computing setup, a company's current servers, with their existing enterprise software, is transitioned over to newly created virtual servers which are theirs only. The company accesses everything as before as normal, with the exception that it is now communicated over the internet not the company's local area network.

6.How Cloud Computing can get rid of PCs

With a full Cloud Computing implementation there are no servers or PCs at the business locations. Data is securely protected and continuously monitored on servers in a safe local physical environment and backed up behind a firewall. All PCs are changed to "Virtualized Desktops". Employees will have a Thin Client, mouse, keyboard and screen but nothing will change in their computing experience. They will be looking at their screens with all their familiar programs such as Office, Outlook, etc.. They will be able to save to "My Docs" and other drives as normal.

The cloud management company will take care of equipment, Microsoft software licensing, antivirus, Spam Filtering, Security, secure backup, server and virtual desktop monitoring, and all the other IT headaches that you would rather not worry about. It's easy to add desktops as you grow, or take them away just as easily if you need to downsize, paying for what you need.

7.Cloud Computing and the IT person /department

The typical IT person working in or for a company is spending up to 80% of their time keeping stuff up-and-running - PCs, hard drives, updates to office software, virus spam protection issues. It's "busy work" which does nothing to improve the company's performance. With a Cloud Computing solution a company does not have to spend time on these activities. More time can be spent on activities that support the business; or, if appropriate, staff can be cut or redeployed.

8.Can Cloud Computing save money?

It is easy to forget how much Information Technology is costing. As well as the "Hard Costs" like cost of hardware, infrastructure, software licenses, there are the more intangible "Soft Costs" such as IT staffing, troubleshooting, energy costs to run the servers and desktops and cool the server room and building. Typically you should be looking for fully costed savings in the area of 30-50% a year. With these levels of savings a business owner should, at the very least, be looking at Cloud Computing in their organization.

9.IT people often say Cloud Computing is less secure than in-house infrastructure. Is this true?

Typically because of the physical security and data security used, cloud security protection is almost always much better than most local company networks. Security over the internet is extremely high with firewalls that form barriers and which are monitored continually. Advanced backup and data recovery mean even a catastrophe can be quickly recovered from. And because all the company data is held on the company's remote servers and is not being held all over the place (such as on local hard drives, thumb drives etc.) the likelihood of software and data contamination and theft is reduced.

10. What happens if a cloud server goes down or there is a catastrophic loss of data?

This is a very important topic. Companies frequently think that their own server rooms are somehow immune from catastrophe and they are also very often woefully under-prepared for a disaster. Simply doing tape backups, putting tapes in fireproof boxes and other methods can give a false sense of security. The reality is if disaster strikes, you need the very latest backup data recovery technology so that you can be up and running in minutes or hours not days or weeks or never! Cloud computing solutions typically take incremental snapshots backed up to multiple locations physically elsewhere to ensure you will be up and running again very quickly.

11.Moving Offices if you are using Cloud Computing

Moving offices or facilities is trivial when a company has a Cloud Computing setup. Because the infrastructure is in place (separate from the old and new company facilities) data can be accessed from anywhere. In theory once the internet connection to the new location is up and running the whole company can be up and running and back to normal as fast as thin clients can be hooked up to the internet!

12.Mobile Computing

With Cloud Computing, your Virtual Desktop can be accessed anywhere and anytime. Other solutions require your office PC to be turned on, and your office Internet connection to be live. Most Internet connected devices, such as laptops, tablets, smart-phones, can be used to connect to your desktop. Imagine being able to run Excel, PowerPoint or any of your business specific software from an iPad or a smart-phone! And security remains at a high level for remote access since only keystroke and screen refresh is sent between the data center and your smart device, but no actual data.

In summary, the benefits of moving to the cloud are great. Cloud computing already is increasingly the way IT is being handled, and owners would therefore be wise to take a look at and embrace the technology now.

Security Challenges for Cloud Computing - How Prepared Are You?

Cloud computing is here, and has been embraced by many an organization. Cloud computing as defined by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is "a model for enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction." [1]. Cloud computing is basically about outsourcing IT resources just like you would outsource utilities like Electricity or water off a shared public grid. The cloud services options include:

Software as a Service (SaaS): Whereby the consumer uses the cloud provider's applications running on a cloud infrastructure and the applications are accessible from various client devices through a thin client interface such as a web browser (e.g., web-based email).

Platform as a Service (PaaS):Here the consumer deploys their own applications on the provider's infrastructure. This option allows the customer to build business applications and bring them online quickly they include services like, Email Campaign management, Sales Force Automation, Employee management, Vendor management etc...

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS): The consumer has access to processing, storage, networks, and other fundamental computing resources where the consumer is able to deploy and run arbitrary software, which can include operating systems and applications. The consumer does not manage or control the underlying cloud infrastructure but has control over operating systems; storage, deployed applications, and possibly limited control of selected networking components (e.g., host firewalls).

Cloud computing has become popular because, Enterprises are constantly looking to cut costs by outsourcing storage, software (as a service) from third parties, allowing them to concentrate on their core business activities. With cloud computing, enterprises save on setting up their own IT infrastructure which would otherwise be costly in terms of initial investment on hardware and software, as well as continued maintenance and human resource costs.

According to the Gartner report on cloud security [2], Enterprises require new skill set and to handle the challenges of cloud security. Enterprises need to see to it that their cloud service provider has most of "the boxes ticked" and that they have their security concerns addressed. Cloud computing being a somewhat a new field of IT with no specific standards for security or data privacy, cloud security continues to present managers with several challenges. There is need for your provider to be able to address some of the issues that come up including the following:

Access control / user authentication: How is the access control managed by your cloud service provider? To be more specific, Do you have options for role based access to resources in the cloud,? How is the process of password management handled? How does that compare to your organization's Information security policy on access control?

Regulatory compliance: How do you reconcile the regulatory compliance issues regarding data in a totally different country or location? How about data logs, events and monitoring options for your data; does the provider allow for audit trails which could be a regulatory requirement for your organization?

Legal issues: Who is liable in case of a data breach? How is the legal framework in the country where your cloud provider is based, visa vi your own country? What contracts have you signed and what issues have you covered/discussed with the provider in case of legal disputes. How about local laws and jurisdiction where data is held? Do you know exactly where you data is stored? Are you aware of the conflicting regulations on data and privacy? Have you asked your provider all the right questions?

Data safety: Is your data safe in the cloud? How about the problems of Man-in-the-middle attacks and Trojans, for data moving to and from the cloud. What are the encryption options offered by the provider? Another important question to ask is; who is responsible for the encryption /decryption keys? [3]. Also you will find that cloud providers work with several other third parties, who might have access to your data. Have you had all these concerns addressed by your provider?

Data separation / segregation: Your provider could be hosting your data along with several other clients' (multi-tenancy).. Have you been given verifiable assurance that this data is segregated and separated from the data of the provider's other clients? According to the Gartner report, its a good practice to find out "what is done to segregate data at rest," [2]

Business continuity: What is the acceptable cloud service down time that you have agreed with your provider? Do these down times compare well with your organization acceptable down time policy? Are there are any penalties/ compensations for downtime, which could lead to business loss? What measures are in place by your provider to ensure business continuity and availability of your data / services that are hosted on their cloud infrastructure in case of disaster? Does your provider have options for data replication across multiple sites? How easy is restoring data in case a need arises?

Cloud services providers have increased their efforts in addressing some of the most pressing issues with cloud security. In response to cloud security challenges, an umbrella non-profit organization called the Cloud Security Alliance was formed, some of its members include: Microsoft, Google, Verizon, Intel, McAfee, Amazon, Dell, HP, among others, its mission is "To promote the use of best practices for providing security assurance within Cloud Computing, and provide education on the uses of Cloud Computing to help secure all other forms of computing" [4]

As more and more organizations move to the cloud for web-based applications, storage, and communications services for mission-critical processes, there is need to ensure that cloud security issues are addressed.

References

1. National Institute of Standards and Technology, N., Cloud Computing definition, I.T. Laboratory, Editor. 2009.
2. Gartner (2008) Assessing the Security Risks of Cloud Computing
3. Rittinghouse, J.W. and J.F. Ransome, Cloud Computing: Implementation, Management, and Security. 2009., New York: Auerbach Publications.
4. Alliance, C.S. Cloud Security Alliance. 2011; Available from: https://cloudsecurityalliance.org/.

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Key Cloud Migration Considerations

The business case has been made and you've appointed your project resources for cloud migration. It's now time to scope and plan your migration. Moving your Enterprise IT workloads to the public cloud is a big decision and immediately alters the way you operate your business. It has to be approached strategically and shouldn't to be taken lightly. There are many benefits to cloud IT, but you must carefully deliberate and plan. The wrong decision is going to cost you in more ways than you care to calculate.

Many thoughts must have cluttered your mind such as, which of the cloud service providers best meets your needs? How would you calculate the cost of cloud migration and operation? How can you ensure service continuity during and after the move? What kind of security measures should you take and what do you need to prepare for? How can you ascertain regulatory compliance? There are many more questions that you should answer prior to migrating to the cloud.

In this article, we will discuss few of the most pressing issues to consider when planning the move.

Private, public or hybrid?

One of the first things to decide when migrating to cloud is whether you will go private, public or hybrid.

On a private cloud, you will have a dedicated infrastructure for your business, managed either by your teams or third-party providers. Your organization will have its own dedicated hardware, running on your private network, and located on or off premises.

A public cloud provides its services over a network that is not your private one and it is available for others to use. Usually it is off-site and provides a pay-per-usage billing model that could result in a cheaper solution, once it efficiently shares resources over the various customers.

Hybrid cloud combines your private or traditional information technology (IT) with a public cloud. Usually it is used to scale up and down your infrastructure systems to meet demand needs for seasonal businesses, spikes or financial closings, or to handle the application apart from the data storage, such as setting up the application layer in a public environment (for example a software as a service) while storing sensitive information in a private one.

Current infrastructure utilization

This is definitely one of the things you want to evaluate when considering a move to cloud. In traditional IT, businesses usually purchase their hardware based on utilization spikes in order to avoid issues when these scenarios occur. By doing that, organizations may end up with underutilized equipment, which could result in a huge waste of money. Taking a look at your performance and capacity reports can help you address these workloads on cloud and decide whether to release unused capacity for other workloads or simply move them over and avoid new investments.

Cloud Workload Analysis

Out of your IT workloads running in your datacenter, some may not be appropriate for migrating to the cloud. It isn't always easy to generalize the criteria for selecting the right applications for migration, but you need to consider all aspects of the execution environment. Given the service parameters promised by the provider, can you achieve the same level of capacity, performance, utilization, security, and availability? Can you do better? Can you afford less?

Your future growth must be factored into the decision. Can the cloud infrastructure scale as your resource consumption grows? Will your application be compliant with regulatory rules when hosted in the public cloud? How does the cloud infrastructure address compliance, if at all?

In order to make the right decision, you should thoroughly understand your current workloads and determine how closely their requirements, both for present and future evolution, can be satisfied.

Application Migration approaches

There are multiple degrees of changes you may want to do to your application depending on your short term and long term business/technical goals.

Virtualization - This model facilitates a quick and easy migration to cloud as no changes will be required to the application. Ideal candidate for legacy applications.

Application Migration - In this case your application will go through minimal architecture and design changes in order to make it optimal for a cloud model of deployment. For example, you may choose to use a No SQL database available on cloud.

Application Refactoring - This model will require a major overhaul of your application right from the architecture. This is typically done when you want to leverage the latest technology stack.

Backup policies and disaster recovery

How are your backup policies running today? Do they fit with your cloud provider? This is also an important point that organizations have to carefully consider. Cloud providers can have standard backup policies with some level of customization. It is worth it to have a look at those and see if they are suitable for your company before they become a potential roadblock. You'll want to pay attention to retention frequency, backup type (such as full, incremental and so on) and versioning.

Disaster recovery and business continuity are important even for the smallest companies. Recovery time objective (RTO) and recovery point objective (RPO) are important values that define how much data you are willing to lose and what amount of time you are willing to allow for the data to be restored.

Licensing

Is the application licensed per VM, per core, or for total infrastructure footprint? This can have massive cost implications. If the licensing model requires that all available resources be taken into account even if not allocated to the client, licensing costs will increase if migrated to a public-cloud platform. Similarly, if the application licensing is based per core and the cloud provider does not offer the ability to configure your cloud environment per core, this will have an adverse impact on your licensing cost.

Integration

Organizations often discover application dependencies too late in the process of migrating workloads, resulting in unplanned outages and limited functionality to systems while these dependencies are addressed. Understanding the relationships between applications is critical to planning the sequence and manner in which cloud migrations occur. Can the application exist on the cloud in isolation while other systems are migrated?

Compatible operational system

Clouds are all about standards, and you need to keep versions of your operating systems and middleware up to date when you aim to migrate them to a cloud provider. You need to take into consideration that cloud service providers (CSPs) do not support end-of-life operating systems or those that are being phased out. The same likely applies to your middleware and databases.

Hopefully this post will help you make decisions about your cloud migration.

An article by Dougles Chan - Recruitment Guru. A Business Coach that specialized on coaching recruitment agencies & staffing agencies. Author of 8 books. 25 years in business coaching in recruitment and staffing agencies. Talks about Pareto Principle - 80 20 rule.  Training recruitment business owners in Singapore, USA, UK, and Australia. He specialized business, sales, marketing, digital marketing, 360 recruitment process, SEO, SEM, and social media recruiting. For 121 recruitment coaching, kindly check here.

5 Exquisite Practices To Understand Cloud Migration Necessity In Your Business

As the cloud turns spry, so it is the way to deal with migration has. In spite of the fact that migrating to the cloud is seen as a smart business move by tech intellectuals, having a summary of the journey is the way to easily transfer and long-term achievement. Cloud ensures enhanced efficiency, agility, cost funds and more storage limit contrasted with its on-start collaborator. In any case, migration to the cloud is consistently a complex process that requires prudence and time.

Unfortunately, cloud computing is as yet an outsider idea for some entrepreneurs around the globe, which is the reason they are stuck in ice-age utilizing independent/heritage or on-preface business enterprise arrangements. If you are going to take that drop, then here's how to go about it and avoid cloud migration story situations.

Nowadays, we are in the hangover stage of cloud computing migration with IT advantages comparing their giddy expectations with the reality on the globe. To avoid this hangover in cloud migration there are many ways. After cloud migration, the performance of technology can be improved effectively.

Here are the simple ways of avoiding cloud migration hangover:

1. Brace for the migration well ahead of time

Most importantly, ensure that everybody in the association gets on-board for the migration. Is your workforce mindful of cloud and its suggestions? As the progress would manage with huge volumes of information, ensure that you're on-start security infra/framework is able to deal with potential security keep risks during the change. These are some essential points to remember while setting up your organization for the migration.

2. Third-party combinations

Guarantee that the cloud application or stage underpins coordination with other third-party enterprise applications including websites and email channels. Further, ensure that cloud migration specialists and experts give you with a definite knowledge and discussion relating to information loss, recovery, and protection. Businesses can use cloud application by contacting third parties and expand their business across the globe.

3. Be clear about your targets

The most convincing purpose of a business to change to the cloud is to meet its expanding requests for efficiency and spryness. Different reasons may integrate hierarchical change, combination, and procurement or a change in corporate target. Independent of the explanation behind traveling to the cloud, business pioneers and business entrepreneurs should have a clear knowledge of why they are migrating to the cloud and guarantee everybody in the organization understand its significance. The organization should have a clear target regarding their migration policy.

4. Determine the resources you expect to move

Migrating your business operations to cloud generates the problems of purchasing on-premise IT infra and related expenses. Additionally, it empowers whenever anyplace access to big business applications/information. That being stated, it is cautious to choose the resources you'll be migrating and the need to do likewise. Having a smart thought about the volume of IT resources permits your technical team to concentrate on other imaginative and basic tasks that can be completed earlier.

5. Brace for impact

Be ready for temporary downtime for your technology. Here, evaluating your organization's capacity to deal with such circumstances would help turn away extra post-migration. This is the reason you should think of a full-confirmation of migration technique that incorporates an agreement to relieve such kind of threats and survive the cloud mass migration effectively.

Toward the day's end after a reserved bunch of minor protuberances, you would understand that the advantages of migrating to cloud are increasing steadily. So, above are the practices that can be helpful to avoid the hangover in cloud computing migration.

Best Tips For Cloud Computing: Advantages And Drawbacks

Cloud computing is considered as a practice of making use of a network for remote servers which could be hosted on the internet to store, manage as well as process data without making use of a local server or personal computer. Let us take a close look on purposes of cloud computing and the benefits as well as drawbacks.

Objectives of Cloud Computing

Before deciding whether to choose these services or not, a clear definition about the applications of software also has to be understood clearly. This might include the user functions, data functions along with the most important attributes about the software as a business system.

Access - Businesses should be able to identify which users, agencies, clients and staffs require access to the functionalities of software and the data that requires to be manipulated. Similarly it also controls what kind of access to the networks is made available to all.

Availability - The availability is yet another purpose of cloud computing and this requires the time at which the access is required whether it is during day or weekends etc. Furthermore it also includes how long the cloud computing could be made unavailable for users followed by how critical is access for the specific system.

Budget - The extent of impact budget issues and timing issues could have on a possible solution is also among some of the most important purposes of cloud computing.

Backup and Recovery - This includes the speed at which the system could be made available again once it goes down. The rate at which the data could continuously change and the total amount of data that is likely going to be there.

Data Sharing - Whether there are any other software systems or data systems that have the ability to share information with this software and whether the data sharing is performed in real-time or batched and whether it is automated or manual?

Security - The importance and security of data for the company and whether there are any legal or other security requirements for the data as well as software interface.

Cloud Computing Advantages

Now let's go through the benefits as well as drawbacks of cloud computing. The ability of cloud computing to transform the way in which companies could make use of technology for servicing customers, partners, suppliers and thereby offering them with enhanced ability and agility are considered as the most important advantages of cloud computing.

Some of the key benefits are explained in detail below.

Cost Efficiency - Cloud computing avoids the need for businesses to invest in stand-alone software as well as servers. Companies can avoid additional costs that are otherwise associated with licensing fees, data storage costs, costs for software updates as well as management by means of utilizing the cloud capabilities. The availability of one time payments followed by the ability to pay while on the go is among some of the benefits that helps save on costs. Cloud computing avoids the need for on-site servers as the businesses and their data are stored in a virtual space. Similarly it reduces the need for in-house IT staffs as most of the manual updates are tasks that have to be done by a system administrator and it would be fulfilled by cloud computing by making use of resource APIs. The hosting servers would be actively monitored, maintained and upgraded with the help of cloud providers.

Availability Any Time - The continuous availability and location independence that helps with data storage, computing as well as networking is also made possible with cloud computing. Thus information can be accessed easily and similarly user requirements could be accommodated even if they are in different time zones and geographic locations.

Simplified Data Recovery and Backup - As the whole data resides on cloud rather than a physical device, the process of data recovery and backup is simplified. The data could be stored off-site and could be easily copied to different servers in various locations. Thus businesses can retrieve the data from other backup networks even though one might go down. The software program of the backup service will encrypt the data in a computer prior to sending it to the cloud. The virus or infection can also be detected before sending the data with the help of this technology.

Redundancy and Scalability - Resiliency is a major benefit as it defines that the data centers and its components such as servers and storage would continue to function even though some kind of disruption do occurs. It is also scalable which means even smaller companies could get immense value in using data centers that help them manage their cloud computing.

Storage - Compared to a personal computer, cloud computing has the ability to store much more data and can prove to be of use for smaller, medium and larger companies with almost unlimited storage capacity on offer.

Device Independence - It could be accessed from any device which has access to the internet making it device-independent in its characteristics. This means that any device which has a browser as well as an internet connection could leverage the benefits of these services.

Drawbacks:-

Even though there are quite a huge number of advantages, some drawbacks are also there for cloud computing.

Some of the drawbacks of cloud computing are as follows.

Data Breaches

Data Loss

Hacking of account or service credentials

Presence of an insecure interface - Interfaces is an important requirement for cloud provisioning, management as well as monitoring and is used commonly by IT administrators. At the same time, APIs is integral to security as well as availability of general cloud services which leads to a possibility of risk as companies will be required to surface their credentials to third-parties so as to enable their agency.

Insufficient knowledge about the cloud environment - Companies that does not have complete awareness about the cloud environment are at a higher risk compared to those who have a clear understanding about cloud computing technology.

Risk of shared vulnerabilities - Even though the infrastructure, platforms and applications are shared by cloud service providers for delivering the services in a scalable way, there is a greater risk of shared vulnerabilities which is known to exist in almost all delivery models.

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What is Cloud Computing? 10 Defining Points

This seems like an odd question to ask since you probably already have some concept of "the cloud." However, given some of the conversations I have been having recently, I think there's a good deal of cloudy thinking about cloud computing.

So here is the gist of what the cloud is (imho) summed up for you in a set of bullet points:

"Cloud Computing" is currently a marketing term. And that's why I'm writing this; to divorce the use of Cloud Computing, the marketing term, from the use of Cloud Computing as an architectural idea. Marketing terms don't have to conform to precise definition. They get used, then abused, then severely exploited and finally, as their bandwagon grinds to a halt, they get pitched onto the sorry stack of broken buzz words. That's what happened to "eBusiness", "Web Services", "On Demand" and so on. Until the recession began in earnest Cloud Computing was a reasonably sane marketing term. That's now changing because, in the minds of the IT audience, the cost of cloud computing is lower. That makes cloud the hype-word du jour.

Cloud Computing is NOT SaaS (Software As A Service). I'm making this point because some commentators have been equating these two ideas as if they were identical. SaaS is healthy terminology. SaaS is out-hosted software that you can access directly. Although you might not think of it as such, your electronic banking capability is SaaS - you just don't pay for it directly. As such electronic banking is no different to Zoho or Google Apps. However, electronic banking is definitely not Cloud Computing, no matter how much you stretch the definition.

Cloud Computing Is Not About Emulating Google It looks suspiciously like the initial enthusiasm for cloud computing as a technology strategy was prompted by Google envy. Google was doing something unprecedented in building huge data centers to support its business. It was clearly a fact that Google's operation was highly efficient and some CIOs mused about whether they could emulate Google. Actually there was no chance, because Google's business was defined by just two uncommon transactions: searching the web and placing adverts. Google designed a huge massively parallel operation using computer servers and switches they built themselves within an architecture that was optimized for precisely that workload. You can't emulate that unless, like some social networking sites, you have a small variety but very large numbers of transactions. As you might expect, some social networking sites have emulated Google.

Cloud Computing Is About Technology Stacks Cloud computing is about technology stacks in the same way that the ISP business is about technology stacks. In general ISP deliver a consistent service to the myriads of web sites they host by employing a standard technology stack, most commonly, the LAMP (Linux Apache, MySQL, PHP) stack. This means that management effort is minimal because everyone is running the same application (a web site) with the same technology (LAMP) and, where customers do have problems, they will normally be the same issues cropping up time and again.

Cloud Computing Is About Economies of Scale The only thing that everyone seems to agree upon about Cloud Computing is that it is constructed for scale and that it is hosted on a set of resources that are distinct from the typical IT network. In other words within "the cloud" there is an architectural attempt to build for scale. Most cloud offerings are going to be based upon scalability. The truth is that if you plan to have a very large data center and you organize its use so that most of the workloads are very similar, or better, identical, then you will achieve significant economies of scale. You will then be able to offer the service at prices that undercut the customer's costs of running the application in-house. The more customers you achieve the better the cost advantage.

Cloud Computing Is Not Outsourcing The typical corporate data center is not a cloud and will never become one. Its workloads are mixed the platforms they run on are mixed - the whole technology stack is mixed. That means you cannot transform the whole data center into a cloud operation. However, you can outsource it.

Are There Any Clouds Computing Standards? Not really, or perhaps better to say "not yet." In general cloud computing infrastructure is built on servers that employ virtualization technology to deliver efficient resource utilization and typically, abide by open standards and, for the sake of economy, use open source software extensively. There is an organization formed by a group of universities, called the Open Cloud Consortium (OCC), which is promoting open frameworks that will let clouds operated by different organizations work together seamlessly.

Is there Such A Thing As An Internal Cloud? Again, not really, or perhaps better said "not yet." There is sense in organizations creating "domains" within their own networks that are built on cloud-type architectures, especially if they have applications that may need to scale over time. If cloud standards existed then such domains could be thought of as Internal Clouds. They would become staging areas for possibly moving internal applications into the cloud, or if the organization has its own software that it intends to offer as a service, then such a domain could become the platform for providing that service.

Is Cloud Computing Anything To Do With Web 2.0? No nothing at all. But you can make the connection if you want to. Many web sites that are said to be Web 2.0, primarily because they are social networking sites, have had to scale up dramatically when their user population shot into the millions. Because of that they have had to adopt highly scalable architectures (or die). Because they have such architectures they may be in a good position to offer some services to users in the manner of cloud computing.

Do Clouds Offer Guaranteed Service Levels? The answer to this is "yes" or at least it should be, and in the future it surely will be. We have to exclude free services, like Yahoo Mail and many of Google's services, which can be described as Cloud Computing from most perspectives, because a free service is never going to offer guarantees (even if it makes an excellent living from adverts.) But Cloud Computing will ultimately be defined, from the user's perspective, by service levels and the nature of the service itself. If Cloud Computing Services are well defined in that way, then it becomes possible to compare such services with the cost of providing a similar capability from your own data center - as long as the Cloud Computing provider is transparent in providing details of the technology that it deploys.

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The Pros & Cons of Cloud Computing, and is it Secure?

Remember, our simplified definition of cloud computing consists of shared computing resources that are virtualized and accessed as a service through an APL.

The Pros

1- Costs/capital expenditures
If cloud computing is right for your company, then major cost savings can be seen in buying and maintaining the needed infrastructure, support equipment, and communication costs. The vendors and/or service provider, who charge the users a utility or user type fee, own these costs.
2- Scalability
One of IT's biggest problem is the constant need to add more equipment to keep up with the growing demand of accessing, storing and analyzing information by both internal and external users. One example is in the data center where adding servers is a major cost issue (actually power for the data center is the number one issue, but it is related to the growing need for items like servers). Since cloud computing is virtual, one can expand or contract equipment/infrastructure as demands change.
3- Start - up
Since the cloud (theoretically) contains the infrastructure and applications, all one just needs to do is "dial" in to the cloud. One can start using applications immediately versus a customary installation, testing and then providing access to the appropriate user community. (Training is assumed to a constant.)
4- Business Applications
Again, the cloud (actually the vendors and/or service providers) through contracts (Service Level Agreements -SLAs) provides numerous business applications for any user who is their client. Again like scale, enterprises only need to know which applications they need to run their business and understand what is actually provided to have access to various business applications. (Training is assumed to be a constant.)
5- Flexibility
Since cloud computing is a virtual offering, a user has the flexibility to choose, on a regular basis, the applications, amount of bandwidth or the number of users by basically modifying his user contract and increasing or decreasing costs at a known rate or factor.

The Cons

1-SLA Agreements
This is the tricky and most important one. SLAs can be very involved and it really leaves the onus on the user to understand and define all requirements in specific detail, and more importantly understand what one is getting in the terms of support, performance, security, etc. A good example is quality of service; one should understand what is offered and what the recourses are if the specified quality is not maintained.
2-Performance
Performance guarantees are usually part of the SLA document, but I have singled this one out because it is critical to maintain the performance (uptime) one needs both for internal AND external users. Understand if the performance guarantee is defined as an average or just during peak times versus a "uniform" performance. If performance is compromised, it can impact many things including revenue and your company's goodwill.
3-Vendors
Not all vendors are created equally! Many vendors are claiming to provide cloud computing, but in reality, they are just providing a specific service, or a specific application or worst they are a middleman and provide no value-add at all. As I sated in my previous posting, one needs to understand the difference between cloud computing and hosted services or managed services or seemingly some form of virtualization. My best advice is to definitely get with reference customers and see if they model what you would like from the cloud.
4-Security
We all know that the internet has some security issues and since the cloud utilizes the internet coupled with applications infrastructure and support, users should be aware of the potential for new threats and increased risk exposure. It is important to include your firm's risk tolerance in any decision to move to cloud computing, as not all the security issues are understood, and new ones will arise.
5-IT Staffing
If one does utilize the cloud, then make sure one understands the vendor staffing that is available to support your needs and hundreds of others using their cloud. A number of vendors out-source staffing and some of the personnel may not be as good as your own internal organization. Ask the potential service provider if they have trained personnel to support the applications you request.

As I have always stated, know your strategy for your IT organization and your lines of business and weigh whether the "pros" out weigh the "cons" for going with cloud computing. Note that there are a number of advantages and disadvantages; do not be swayed by looking at cloud computing from only a cost-saving point of view.

In all probability the answer will be some thing in the "middle", i.e. some hybrid form of cloud computing.

As for security and cloud computing

In Forrester's article titled " A Close Look At Cloud Computing Security" by Chenxi Wang, Ph.D. Wang states "While cloud computing is able to deliver many benefits, organizations should not jump on the "cloud" wagon without a compelling business driver and a clear understanding of the security, privacy, compliance, and legal consequences. An effective assessment strategy covering these items will help you reach the ultimate goal: Make the cloud service work like your own IT security department and find ways to secure and optimize your investments in the cloud."

Forrester includes data protection, disaster recovery, and identity management as some of the areas under security and suggest that an audit of the potential cloud provider to see what level of security is actually provided.

As for compliance, the user should analyze how the cloud may or may not impact one's compliance requirements.

For legal and contractual issues, Forrester advises that one understands who owns/is responsible for what, between the user and the provider (the data, the infrastructure, etc.)

Another article by Network World's Jon Brodkin titled "Gartner: Seven Cloud - Computing Security Risks" he talks about seven security risk areas.

1. Privileged user access, sensitive data processed outside the enterprise.

2. Regulatory compliance, how does the cloud provider match your guidelines?

3. Data location, where exactly is your data housed?

4. Data segregation, understand that your data is "sitting" next to other's data

5. Disaster Recovery, what happens when there is an outage?

6. Investigating inappropriate or illegal activity may be impossible in cloud computing,

7. Long-term viability, what happens if your provider "goes away"?

Another article in Network World that reported on the RSA conference, and stated that the former technical director of NSA, Brian Snow is very concerned about vendors offering cloud computing from a security point of view. He is concerned about vendors not addressing current security issues and about new issues that cloud computing will create. Ironically another panelist was concerned about "Big Brother" listening in on cloud computing and how this might impact enterprises' privacy and compliance issues.

So to wrap up, the internet has security issues, and since cloud computing is in the internet, cloud computing will have those security issues, ones listed above, and ones yet to be discovered. It comes down to the risk profile for your corporation; what level of risk is right for your company relative to investing in cloud computing? Obviously part of the risk assessment depends on your type of company. If you are a financial advisor or in stock management where your intellectual property is basically the company then cloud computing as we currently know it is not right for you at any cost savings. If you resell ping -pong balls (no offense to ping- pong ball resellers) than the risk is relatively low and the savings from cloud computing outweigh the security and other considerations.

Have you conducted an adequate risk assessment before deciding to move to cloud computing in Singapore? Check out Asiapac Sinagpore. Asiapac Distribution Pte Ltd is the leading AWS consultant in Singapore.