Top 2 aspects of cloud computing you need to consider before investing in cloud

If you are planning to invest in a cloud computing environment, you are not alone. In the present era, majority of business owners prefer to invest in cloud and data centre services in order to provide their customers with improved services. Although the large enterprises can plan to invest in personalized data centres, it’s hardly possible for SMEs. However, in order to cater to their target audience in a better way, they need to upgrade the quality of their services and products. This is where a cloud solution seems to be the most reliable option.

With the emergence of big data, each and every company needs a proper data storage facility in order to continue with their business initiatives properly. Cloud is a cost effective solution to store all the business critical data securely. But is it completely secure to store your mission critical data in cloud? Well, that is where you need to do a thorough research on your own business requirements and identify what kind of a cloud solution can meet your needs. At the same time, you should also be aware of the probable risk factors while investing in a cloud solution as this will help you deal with the situations tactfully in future. According to the industry experts, there are some aspects that you need to consider thoroughly and then determine whether or not you should opt for a cloud based solution. Here are two of the most relevant aspects of storing data in cloud that you should give a thought well in advance –

·         Shared access – If you decide to store data in a public cloud environment, then this is one of the most vital aspects that you should consider. This is because multi-tenancy is one of the core features of a public cloud environment. This means multiple customers, belonging to different domains, share the similar computing resources. If you are going to store valuable business data in a shared server space, make sure you know all the intricate details of a server. Additionally, consider using a VPN tunnel as it helps protect the public cloud data, in order to safeguard the valuable data perfectly.

·         Virtual exploits – All the large cloud service providers use the technology of virtualization. However, this holds the risks that are posed by virtual machines. Moreover, there are certain exploits who target the visual server hosts and the guests. Basically, there are four major virtual exploit risks including guest to guest, server host only, guest to host and host to guest. While these are the major probable risks, most of the times these are unknown. Therefore, most service provider don’t count these in the risk model that they plan to handle.

If you are planning to invest in a cloud environment, make sure you have a clear understanding of all the core features of it. This will help you make a better utilization of the service you invest in. 

What are the reasons behind so much buzz around Private Cloud?

If you are the owner of a SMBU or you run a large scale enterprise, you must have felt the requirement of a cloud service. However, if you don’t have a very clear idea about cloud service, you must know about private cloud at the first place. This is a specific model of cloud computing which involves a secure and distinct cloud environment. This type of cloud environment is designed in a way so that only a specific client can operate. Just like some of the other cloud models, the private cloud model, too, provides computing power in a particular way. The service is provided within an environment with the help of a pool of computing resources.

Over the past few years, the popularity of private cloud has sky rocketed, and there are significant reasons for that. The most remarkable feature of this type of cloud environment is that only a single organization can access this. If you would like to know the reason behind its popularity, here are some of them –

• Improved control – Since a private cloud is accessible only to a single organization, it ensures added control over the system. If you opt for a private cloud environment for your business, you will be able to configure it according to your own requirement. You can also manage it on your own terms and ensure a customized network solution.
• Higher privacy and security – Unlike public cloud models, private cloud models ensure that all the valuable information and operations are kept absolutely secure. This added security is ensured using a lot of techniques like distinct pools of resources, on-site internal hosting and dedicated leased lines.
• Cost effective option – By implementing a private cloud model you can utilize your resources better within the organization. Since resources will be available to the individual business functions or departments, they will be able to respond to any sort of demand promptly. Although this type of cloud environment is not as affordable as that of public cloud services, it helps make better use of the available computing resources. With this environment, you can be assured of minimized investment into unused capacity.
• Integration with public cloud – If needed, you can integrate the existing cloud environment with the public one and create hybrid clouds. In this system, the non-sensitive functions are placed on the public cloud, ensuring the best possible efficiency.
• Cloud bursting – If you have been looking for cloud bursting services, opting for a private cloud environment might prove to be quite beneficial for you. There are many providers who allow you to employ cloud busting in a private cloud environment. In order to provide more free space within this type of cloud environment, the service provider moves certain functions, basically which are not so sensitive, to a public cloud. This ensures the sensitive functions that require a lot of space to function properly, have enough space.

These are some of the key reasons why there is so much buzz around private cloud. If you are looking for a secure, yet cost effective cloud solution for your business and would also like to enjoy the benefits of virtualization, opting for a private cloud environment would be quite beneficial for you.

Top 3 significant business problems that you can solve using a cloud hosting solution

Over the past few decades, cloud computing has contributed to the improvement of the IT industry to a great extent. It not only provides immediate access to a lot of tools and resources, but also enables the users to pursue their goals that are extremely complicated in nature. Keeping a close eye on the rapid increase in the demand of cloud solutions, the service providers are refining their solutions based on the exact business needs. This, undoubtedly, is a great scenario for the entire industry and companies can capitalize on the advancements of cloud computing in this way.

All businesses, irrespective of their size, language, or industry, face certain problems that are similar in nature. For instance, it’s common for all those professionals who hold a managerial post, to ask questions like how to balance the budget. This is where a cloud solution helps well. Although it might seem initially that there is no direct connection between the ground level problems and a cloud solution, this helps you solve all these problems from a very basic level.

Here are some of the basic business problems that can be solved with the help of a cloud hosting solution–

• • Lack of security – Although many consider cloud hosting as not so safe an option for information storage, it’s a highly secure option for storing important data. There are certain advance features which help increase the privacy of the important business data. With proactive security engineering measures, all the sensitive business information remains absolutely secure. With a robust cloud hosting solution, the integrity and confidentiality of data remains intact. Once you invest in a hosting solution, you can rest assured of the security of data.
  • Deficiency of storage space – Cloud hosting is space saving and there is no doubt about that. While storing all the important documents in their physical format, you are surely going to run out of space after a certain point of time. Moreover, if you attempt to store all the documents in a single place, and in an organized way, you must appoint someone to keep a close eye on all the documents and maintain those properly. This will not only cost you a lot of money, but also a considerable amount of space and time. This is where relying on a cloud solution seems to be a wise decision as you can store unlimited amount of data in a cloud environment, without worrying about its security.
  • Problem in collaboration – There are times, when you need to collaborate with a group of team members who are working from a remote location. With the help of a cloud solution, you can easily share documents and files with employees, working from different locations, and thus, collaborate with them easily. This also enables all the employees to access the important information as and when needed.
  
  
  These are the most common and relevant business problems that can be solved with the help of a cloud hosting solution. So if your business is facing any of these troubles, this might be the high time to invest in a cloud hosting solution.

Have you considered these benefits of cloud storage for your business?

Cloud computing as well as cloud storage is quite a well-known topic of the IT industry in the present era. Right from the small scale business owners to the large enterprises, everyone is aware of the fact that opting for a cloud based solution will prove to be beneficial for their business in a number of ways. This is why a lot of business owners have migrated to cloud based environment over the past few years. Well, there are significant reasons for such a trend. After all a cloud environment enables the small and medium scale business owners to continue with their business ventures. With a cloud based solution, these businesses can store their vital data securely, without spending a lot on private servers.

Cloud storage is basically a service that allows the users to store different files over the web and thus enables them to access those files from anywhere, at any point of time. In this service all the data are remotely managed, backed up and maintained. According to a recent survey that was conducted with over 800 business owners, located across the globe, the number of enterprises that have been benefitted through cloud adoption, has been doubled over the last few years. It has also been predicted that by 2017, the market of public cloud services will probably exceed $244 billion. If you are not sure whether or not to invest in a cloud based solution, here are some of the most significant benefits of cloud storage –

·         Disaster recovery – This is probably one of the most important aspects of a cloud based storage. For any business, having a strong emergency backup plan is extremely important and a cloud storage offers an easily accessible back up plan. Once you store some data in cloud, you can rest assured of its back up files. This ensures you don’t have to worry about the security of the important data.

·         Saved bandwidth – While running a business, you need to be calculative enough to measure in what ways you can cut the operational costs and invest the saved amount of money in some core functions. With a cloud storage, you can simply send a web link to the recipients through your mail, instead of emailing the files to the individuals. In this way, all of the recipients will be able to access the same information and at the same time, you will be able to save a considerable amount of bandwidth.

·         Wide accessibility – All the files that you store in a cloud storage can be accessed whenever you need to. Since you store all these files in a space that can be accessed over the web, there is no limitation regarding when or from where you can access these files.  Right from the day to day business records to the important organizational data, you can save anything and everything in a cloud storage and access it as and when required.

These are some of the most important benefits of a cloud storage solution that you need to consider if you are planning to invest in such a solution.

4 reasons that will inspire you to move to cloud

Over the past few years, businesses, belonging to different industries, have gradually shown interest in cloud services and there are significant reasons behind a trend like this. According to industry experts, the rate of cloud adoption has grown faster than what was anticipated previously. Apart from ensuring increased efficiency and improved cash flow, cloud offers a lot of other benefits. No matter whether you have just started a business venture, or you have been associated with a large scale business organization since long, it’s never too late to opt for a cloud service. Whether you are looking for Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) or you are planning to invest in a solution like Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), the outcome of investing in cloud computing is pretty obvious. Not quite aware of the exact benefits that you might get to experience after opting for a cloud computing solution? Here is a list, highlighting the most significant ones; take a quick look –

·         Application of fresh software – When you invest in Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), you can use the latest versions of all the applications that are needed to run the business operations smoothly. As all the applications are upgraded immediately, this ensures you can enable your employees with all the new functionalities and features. As a result of this, the overall productivity gets increased significantly. More interestingly, the software upgrades are released at frequent intervals and this helps improve your business functions to a great extent.

·     Flexibility of cost – When compared to a traditional method or an on premise solution, the cost of a cloud computing solution is quite flexible. As an organization, you need to pay only for the infrastructure and server capacity as per the usage. For instance, when you are expecting high traffic, you can provision more capacity, and then again, de-provision the same when it’s no longer required. With a traditional computing solution, you will have to buy the additional capacity to accommodate the high traffic.

·           Effective disaster recovery – Investing in a robust disaster recovery solution is a must for every business organization, but for small and medium businesses, it’s often not possible to make this additional expense. However, with cloud computing, it has now become possible for SMBs to implement recovery and backup solutions. These solutions not only help avoid the up-front investment, but also help save a great deal of time, which can be further used for the productive activities.

·           Improved collaboration – One of the most amazing benefits of investing in cloud computing is that it helps ensure better collaboration. Since all your team members can access, share and edit documents from any location, at any point of time, it helps them perform better. With a cloud solution on board, you can rest assured of improvement both in terms of quantity and quality. As they can access cloud based workflow as well as some file sharing apps, it will help them follow the updates in real time.

Considering these four major benefits of opting for a cloud computing solution will surely motivate you to invest into one. However, make sure to plan the implementation of a solution like this well in advance. 

How to choose the most reliable cloud application hosting provider

There is no doubt regarding the fact that moving some of the business operations like document storage and email to the cloud definitely helps organizations streamline the workflow and cut the costs to a great extent. This is also a great strategy to eradicate the requirement of hardware and in-house IT professionals. In fact, cloud also makes it simpler and easier for the remote employees to communicate with the core managers and access all the vital information and collaborate amongst themselves. Probably it’s the small and medium scale organizations that benefit the most from cloud application hosting. This is beneficial since the small and medium scale businesses get a scope to focus on their core businesses.

In the present time, designing and building mobile applications has turned out to be an obvious trend for almost all the businesses. This is why investing in cloud application hosting has become a basic need for all the businesses. If you are looking for cloud application hosting providers, be ready to check out several options. There are many service providers who offer end to end cloud application hosting services. However, if you are not sure how to select the most reliable service provider, here are some tips that you should definitely follow –

·         Check the pricing structure of the service provider – As a user, you should be very clear about the pricing structure that the service provider follows. Be sure to check if the organization with which you are going to sign the deal offers a pay-as-you-go model. You should also check if there are any initial upfront costs, which are not usually charged by the large scale organizations. From the outset, the pricing structure should be pay-as-you-use and it should also be able to add the services as and when required.

·         Find out the location of the data centre – This is probably one of the most important factors that you should consider right at the beginning. You should start thinking about it well in advance as this affects the security of your mission critical data to a great extent. Before signing the deal with the service provider, you should definitely check whether or not it is located in a safe zone.

·         Verify the security of the cloud environment – Security, is indeed a major consideration for selecting a third party cloud service provider. Check if the service provider follows the standard security measures and update those consistently. This ensures that your mission critical information remains safe and secure. Make sure you are completely comfortable with the cloud providers’ approach to security.

These are some of the most important tips by following which you will be able to choose the most reliable cloud application hosting provider.

How Beneficial is The Cloud for your Organisation?

Two decades back, before major search engines were launched, would you have believed if someone told you that you’d have information at your fingertips, in the cosy comfort of your home?

Fast forward to the year when social media websites/apps were released, and user-generated stories took on the world by the storm. You could connect and communicate with people, and information was stored on the server for everyone in your network to see. Today, the world has moved on from the local server and local infrastructure to a more virtual server and virtual infrastructure. Cloud has truly transformed how people share information, retrieve data, work in remote, and send messages to each other. With the cloud, the digital transformation was finally initiated.

For the uninitiated, we will take you through the basics of cloud computing, and the different cloud hosting services available to make your life comfortable and easy.

Cloud hosting services

Cloud hosting can be simply called an on-demand technology that works on the principle of shared storage and processing. The physical grid principles have been taken to the virtual world to ensure multiple computing resources share the hardware, and function with speed.

When you are hosting on the cloud, you are not hosting the data onto a single server but on multiple servers, thus safeguarding your data from system failures and other issues. Automating data access is another virtue of cloud hosting.

There are a multitude of cloud hosting services and cloud hosting providers that you need to take a look at, understand, articulate and assess for your needs. Majorly divided into three, public, private and hybrid, we will take you through each of them individually.

Public cloud: Available on the Internet, this cloud infrastructure is open to the public. It is easy to setup, highly economical, and comes with affordable bandwidth costs. You can opt for the pay-per-use model, which will allow you to pay for the services you use. The only fallback of this model is the fact that it follows the principle ‘one size fits all’, which may not be the case for your organisation.

Private cloud: Unlike the public cloud, the private cloud is owned by a specific company, and it offers the cloud computing benefits along with complete control over your data. Large enterprises opt for private cloud as they view it as enhanced security for their data and enterprise. The assets are singularly stored within the firewall strictly compiled by the enterprise.

Hybrid cloud: As the name suggests, it is a hybrid between the private and public cloud. It offers data control akin to private cloud, while keeping with the software-as-a-service principle of the public cloud. It takes the best of both the worlds, to offer extensive control and better data management to enterprises.

Benefits of cloud to organisations

With every technology that has come into existence, extensive opportunities have been created for businesses, and business models have evolved for better revenues and profitability.

·         Reduced investments: When you are opting for the cloud, you are opting to pay for whatever service you would be using. Most often, enterprises need to invest in infrastructure that would be deployed on their premises. With the cloud, the cost and efforts involved in setting up the IT infrastructure are reduced, thus reducing the overhead costs in a major way. This, in turn, helps you fund your team and projects, thus increasing chances of profitability.

·         Easy scalability: Upgrading a physical system requires a lot of effort from the team. You will have to develop and deploy the applications on the premise, and even deploy the hardware accordingly. That’s not the case with the cloud. The server and infrastructure are virtual which means scalability is definitely not your headache anymore. The development is easier on the cloud, making creating applications faster, and the performance testing easier for you.

·         Easy maintenance: You are on the cloud, which means you don’t really need to invest time or effort in maintaining the infrastructure. Moreover, the systems and applications on the cloud undergo automated updates, which reduce your need to interfere and test or update the application or system on a regular basis. Downtime of the system can harm the company’s reputation, and even cause abandonments. With the right cloud hosting providers, you don’t need to worry about that, as now you won’t be facing any downtime.

·         Transformed disaster recovery: Backup is a major trouble with people, and most people don’t attempt to take regular backup of their data, which could cause sudden loss of data. The process of backing up data manually is time-consuming and pretty expensive. To avoid the costs and time involved with backing up data, and to prevent the losses that are likely to occur with data loss due to unforeseen disasters, the cloud is the best path for enterprises. This will schedule auto-backup, and store your data to the server. The centralised database will possess all your data and is regularly synced, based on the intervals you have suggested. This makes life hassle-free for companies.

With the technology provided by cloud service providers, companies need not worry about their data and infrastructure and can concentrate on their core, bringing in more productivity and profitability to the organisation.