As organisations make huge tech investments in Artificial Intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), digital commerce, Data lakes, Data and Analytics (D&A) and customer experience (CX), cloud migration has become an imperative.
FAQs on our Cloud Computing Services
Cloud computing is a type of computing in which IT- enabled services are delivered using internet technologies. Cloud computing leverages a network of remote servers, hosted via the internet, to store, manage and process data, rather than hosting it locally. Essentially, cloud computing is using someone else’s infrastructure and hardware to reduce the amount of capital investments your business needs to make.
Offerings under Cloud computing include a multitude of services like delivery of various types of IT assets as a service. this includes compute as a service, storage as a service, databases as a service, security as a service, backend as a service, etc.
Cloud computing makes reference to a 3-tiered architectural model – SaaS (software as a service), PaaS (platform as a service) and IaaS (infrastructure as a service). Service delivery is either from public cloud service providers or hosted internally or a private cloud.
Adoption of cloud has grown significantly in all type of industries as businesses see benefits in efficiency, cost savings, and performance with limited resources/budget. Organizations that have well-architected cloud computing models have achieved key business benefits including: faster deliveries, seamless data backup, enhanced productivity, scalability, reduced time, powerful server capabilities and flexibility.
Software product companies offering Software as a Service (SaaS) help customers in cutting down admin and operational costs that were part of the traditional models prevalent earlier.
Having a cloud strategy is important for a contemporary business, especially in this digitally disruptive era. Without having a cloud strategy driven by business outcome, organizations increase the risk of failure and their investments may get wasted.
Organizations move or adopt cloud for various reasons. It is important to evaluate if cloud strategy and the existing IT landscape is beneficial for your organization’s growth. Before deciding on a cloud strategy, you should consider the following scenarios:
– What is the demand of IT throughout the year?
– How much of IT spend is impacting the company’s overall business?
– Are there better options available?
Such a detailed evaluation will give you the right vision to formulate an appropriate strategy that will help your organization. Businesses may also adopt a staggered approach for implementing a cloud strategy.
Cloud strategy begins with a clear understanding of the organization’s technical and business objectives. The important drivers to shift to cloud and the solutions required to drive these changes are identified.
A proper cloud strategy road map is then developed to guide the cloud migration. The cloud adoption may be initiated on a small scale and as per the business or IT demands. Strategies driven from the needs also help choose the right cloud platform and execution.
Get in touch with our cloud consultants who can help you perform a detailed evaluation of your business requirements. We can then formulate a cloud adoption strategy aligned with your business goals!
Many assessment models and feasibility studies are available today that help in evaluating the TCO associated with successful cloud adoption. For some specific features, the cloud services may sound to be costlier than the standard value. However, the organization always has the option to scale down.
For some organizations, saving cost may be the primary business objective. A heterogenous approach to cloud adoption with visibility into TCO for Opex and Capex may be a more suitable for them.
Deciding a cloud services plan with acceptable pricing can be a bit challenging. Some cloud solution providers eliminate this worry by offering a flat rate pricing model. You can also decrease the cost factor by entering into a long-term Service Level Agreement (SLA) with your cloud provider.
Having a clear cloud strategy helps. It is best to have a clear idea about critical resources that need to go on the cloud. It is advisable to partner with a reliable cloud computing service provider, who can handle the transition with minimal disruption to service and business.
There are a few factors such as reliable network, data backup plan, etc. that one must be prepared with before migrating to the cloud, in order to avoid any critical data loss.
Workloads can be moved to the cloud depending on the business objectives and cloud strategy. Organizations may choose to move the complete IT workloads to the cloud, stepwise.
Conventionally, Cloud services were always used for data backup, but now it is extensively used for storing & processing application-based workloads like CRM, HR, marketing, etc.
Test and Dev environments can be quickly spun up in the cloud on demand, and after use, the service can be shut down. Scalable and on-demand applications work best in cloud as organizations don’t have to invest upright on capex. Backup as a Service helps in ensuring business continuity and reducing downtime.
Protection of business-critical resources against cyberthreats is one of the topmost concerns shared by organizations in the context of cloud migration. Cloud computing service providers implement numerous security features to secure the data, and also to ensure that the data is restored with minimum or no disruption.
Some of the key components of cloud storage security are encryption, identity management, application security, physical security, and firewalls. Cloud also provides appropriate Identity management, Access Controls, Authentication and authorization for access. With these security practices in place, organizations can ensure the safety of their critical data.
Some of the key characteristics of a cloud computing model are the following:
- Elasticity and Scalability
- Self-service provisioning and automatic de-provisioning
- Standardized interfaces
- Billing self service based usage model
Some of the key characteristics of a cloud computing model are the following:
- Self-service provisioning and automatic de-provisioning
- Standardized interfaces
- Scalability and elasticity
- Ubiquitous Network
- Availability and Resilience
- Billing on self-service based usage
In cloud computing, scalability refers to the process of statically increasing (scale up) or decreasing (scale down) the computing resources or its capacity to meet the varying workload requirements.
On the other hand, elasticity in cloud computing refers to commissioning and decommissioning of a large amount of resource capacity to meet the workload requirements. The underlying aim of cloud elasticity is to prevent overprovisioning or underprovisioning of a specific application/service.
The different layers of cloud computing are:
- SaaS or Software as a Service (SaaS) includes any cloud-based application that can accessed over internet/web browser without having to download anything on the user’s device.
- IaaS: IaaS: Infrastructure as a service offers the infrastructure and resources required to compute, store and network over the internet on a pay-as-you-go basis.
- PaaS: Platform as a service offers the users with a complete platform( middleware, database systems, servers, storage, development & BI tools) to develop, deploy , and manage their application on pay-as-you-go basis. PaaS model eliminates the need to develop and manage infrastructure required to build the application.
Virtual platform helps in:
- Implementing Cloud OS
- Dynamic workload placement
- Isolating User and backend level concepts
- Faster provisioning
- Managing service level policies
Before selecting any cloud computing platform, following factors must be evaluated:
- Compliance with Industry Standards and certifications
- Strategy to manage data loss/ latency
- Data Governance and security plan
- Data storage plan
- Business continuity Plan
- System Uptime
- Data integrity in cloud computing
A private cloud imitates the delivery models of public cloud providers. However, this is done completely within the firewalls for the benefit of the company’s users. A private cloud is heavily virtualized, and it consolidates a large amount of IT infrastructure into one/multiple logical resource pools.
Private clouds are owned and managed by individual companies. The access to the cloud may be limited to the enterprise that implements it or a part of its value chain.
- Facilitate communication between one or more applications
- Act as gateways for enabling direct/indirect cloud software and infrastructure services to users
- Save development effort and time
