I’ve been following cloud computing for some time and every day I see that it is accelerating the ripening process and trying to understand its concept and technologies. Today it is clear that, in its various forms, cloud computing has the potential to significantly change the way IT operates, and manages and allocates its budget, and pays for its use by users. Of course it is a change that does not happen abruptly, but gradually.

Public clouds, for example, while still generating fears of security and privacy, which are in my opinion, largely unfounded, no doubt put pressure on the structure of IT. Why keep a set of dedicated servers often idle, and a staff dedicated to operations that do not add value to upgrades of operating system releases if I can transfer this activity to a trusted provider?

Moreover, when analyzing the portfolio of applications in a company, we found that most of them are not strategic or critical to profile data that is not sensitive in terms of security. And we also observed that most of these applications could operate in an environment of less than 95% availability. However, these applications can be moved to public clouds without any major scares. In fact, a public cloud can offer a level of security and availability much higher than that offered in many of today’s data centers to small and medium enterprises.

The topic cloud also begins to permeate discussions of strategic companies. In a meeting with business executives and the CIO of a large company it became clear that they were already considering that a significant portion of its future computing power would be served by public clouds, with a consequent impact on the IT budget,  which will shift the costs of “Capital Expenditure” to “operational Expenditure”.

On the other hand, the concern of disintermediation by IT users in many areas also appeared at the meeting, as they begin to look for other solutions, cloud, SaaS, without even interacting with the CIO. This is a challenge that IT has to face because uncontrolled spread of a cloud for the organization can create problems of integration, lack of adherence to security policies and increase the risk of audit to identify issues of governance.

The CIO has to play a proactive role in the process of adoption of cloud. Indeed, the question is not whether or not to adopt cloud, but what is the pace of adoption. The first step is to identify which applications exist, which may at first go to public cloud and / or private and create a catalog of services and applications that will be available in the clouds.

For example, the CIO can begin reviewing applications available today under two points of view, a level of criticality and the other how they are strategic to the business. Most applications will be below of the critical level and can be transferred to public clouds.

The pressure for cost reduction is constant and note that it is increasing every year. At the same time the complexity of the business environment demands faster responses and increasingly complex IT solutions. Seems an equation without answers, but if we analyze the potential of cloud, we can immediately identify:

1) Move non-critical (and not strategic) applications and not strategic to public clouds,
2) Implement private clouds for certain controlled environments such as development and testing, increasing the cycle
3) Create service catalogs that allow the user to operate in self-service, with minimal interference from IT.

These actions help to better understand what is cloud and its potential while allowing the organization to adjust and refine their governance processes, already contemplating cloud computing. It also helps to more accurately implement charge back processes that are indispensable when it comes to cloud computing.

Services to create a catalog that includes internal and external applications (SaaS), similar to an Apple AppStore is an innovative and highly efficient way of providing services to users. The IT department can and should define the rules of the game: Which applications can enter the catalog? The IT department should establish an approval process that can evaluate cloud providers and SaaS applications available. Thus, IT does not become a bottleneck and at the same time clearly shows that it is actively driving the process of “cloudification” in company.

The important thing is that, IT understands that its role does not disappear with the cloud computing model. It remains responsible for providing the best services in the lowest possible cost.

Cloud changes the context: IT is no longer the only provider of the service and should leave this monopoly role and assume a new role. So sometimes the best solution is built, developed and operated by IT and other best alternative is to operate in a public cloud. IT should be at the center of these decisions and for that, the mindset must be changed.

Although it is a very broad concept and too broad to be answered in a few lines, the question of preparation of national firms to the paradigm of cloud computing begins at the outset to be dependent on the type of cloud that is spoken – private or public – and the level of security that the customer wants.

The concept of cloud computing solutions is directly related to the provision of services outside the corporate network from a client (hence the cloud) services which may be translated into software, infrastructure or platform (Software as a Service – SaaS, Infrastructure as a Service – IaaS, Platform as a Service – PaaS).

A private cloud, by definition, provides a higher level of safety, since the very corporate network (private) serves as the infrastructure, where the above services will be hosted  in their own data center. In the case of non-existence of data center network business customer, a supplier may offer its infrastructure backbone (as well as all SLAs agreed with the client) as an “extension” of the corporate network from the client. We are here to speak about technologies / protocols such as MPLS VPNs, and the Data Center of external provider (or a Data Center “rented” to another company for this purpose) will host the services so that the end client intends as being in the cloud – not on the corporate network itself.

The public cloud, on the other hand, it all depends on the customer’s perspective and security that he wishes – an additional level of security, particularly at the level of encryption of data for confidentiality, since the Internet is the infrastructure used for the provision of services in the cloud. We all know examples of this. Even social networks, GoogleMail, SalesForce. In practical terms, the services in the public cloud need only an Internet connection, while in the case of private clouds, it may not be (and usually is not) enough so dedicated lines, operator services, including MPLS VPNs are required.

On the other hand, a time as we are experiencing today in the budgetary restraints are compelling, there may be doubts about the ability of enterprises to bear the initial costs of cloud computing.

But in my opinion, companies are always ready to adopt solutions which have advantages for operating business. When adopting a particular technology or solution, so important is its cost, such as maintenance, but we should also know the return on this investment and how long it will take place. That is, we must make a “business case“!

On the other hand, am not convinced that the initial costs have to be higher than those companies contract cyclically to renew or refresh their IT infrastructure. It is the time that companies should ask about new ways. Only then, we can protect and maximize investments.

When two years ago we started to talk intensely about cloud computing, you looked at this technology as something very abstract, so that the same hosting provider did not see any reason to start to become interested in something that would come to a finished product after years. So it was not, and even at the expense of those who did not believe it, the cloud services today, is a “race” for many providers  convinced that they can reuse their hardware or their marketing, even with this new product. Many are taking it seriously, with advice and targeted investments, mainly aimed at creating its own private cloud, and not the use of a public cloud, obviously considered too “far” from the property.

Yet there are also opportunities to wonder. A provider of the Indian scene claims to use a solution of a cloud as well-known Indian company, came in first with the reality term cloud services in the Indian  market. The most observant will know who we speak, for others simply search on Google. This is an interesting piece of news, because in fact marks the transition from dedicated server, up to now, seen as the only solution for hosting providers that want to offer shared hosting, the ability to accommodate all its customers on cloud instances, expandable and scalable so as to decrease the load or the customers.

The cloud services today provides everything that you need, with a management certainly greater than that of a dedicated machine. The potential for increasing the resources allocated in real time, including the band, is certainly a feature of interest to those who provide shared hosting or have clients with unpredictable traffic.

The costs are definitely lower, but in this case we are talking about an investment that can make sense only if all its infrastructure migrates in a cloud outside. The choice of a public service for a hosting provider sets conditions of assurance on it that could turn up their noses a lot , but it is clear that the implementation of a solution of much higher costs than private cloud has an initial investment and all hosting providers will not be able to afford this.

The transition from dedicated server to cloud computing will obviously be easier for hosting companies, when they exist standard platforms, then move one instance of a large provider to another will not be a problem and will give technical and economic opportunities that will not be indifferent.

With the growth of the value of clouds for some IT solutions providers are beginning to take an interest in what exactly it meant. In the end, many of you have long offered clients to use host-applications, which, in essence, cloud services are under another name.

So you already know what are the benefits that are provided by cloud computing services to your customers: a small initial capital costs, or complete absence, pay only the actual services received, scalability and flexibility. For you, the main advantages of cloud services are a constant revenue stream, deep penetration in the business of clients and flexibility to tailor services to customer needs.

So if you have some time provide Hosted Exchange services with or related to backup and restore data, you are completely forgivable to ignore the talk about clouds as the next hype in the IT industry. Or unforgivable?

Enough to have in its arsenal, one or two services such as SaaS, although they could well help you prepare for the era of cloud services. Looking to the future, customers will increasingly move their infrastructure into the cloud. And if all that you can offer, is the e-mail host system, you face the loss of customers.

Since virtualization, private clouds and services based on public clouds every day are becoming more popular. IT has a long history of adaptations and innovations, and cloud is a important chapter in this story. If you skip this chapter, it can have fatal consequences for your business.

Large corporations such as Verizon and Google, end users are bombarded with advertisements on its cloud products. As this onslaught of more and more customers will be prepared to cloud computing and would like to have more services.

Fortunately for solution providers, you have plenty of options to create a full set of cloud services. Let’s say you have to offer Hosted services through Exchange. What can you supplement them? It makes sense to explore other products Hosted on Microsoft, such as server, database and maintenance of desktop systems, to create a cloud menu.

Of course, you are not limited to products of Microsoft, Cisco and Dell. You and all the solutions provider should also not be overly suspicious of large corporations. In particular, although Microsoft has achieved record sales through the channel, the manufacturer has caused some confusion among its partners on their role in providing cloud services, such as Azure and BPOS. However, Microsoft’s strategy in connection with the clouds deserves a separate article.

Solutions providers should also pay attention to host the infrastructure and services such as “platform as a service” (PaaS), as well as to private cloud using virtualization technology and reminding the public clouds, which allow you to take advantage of the cloud environment inside the network perimeter.

Many manufacturers also offer in addition to its virtual cloud product technical support. This means that you can give it to function manufacturer partners and focus on growing your business.

So when it comes to clouds, then, yes, there is no shortage of publicity. But this does not mean that solutions providers cannot simply ignore it and do its routine. Clouds are a source of change, and therefore require that providers of solutions once again adjusted to the ongoing large-scale shifts in the industry.

The Path To Efficiency Is Through The “Cloud Computing“

Economic turmoil in 2008 led many companies to restructure their costs and focus on a more rational use of resources. Primarily, the companies began to reduce funding of non-core activities, which are often among the maintenance and development of its IT infrastructure. This wave came into vogue terms such as “consolidation”, “virtualization” and “cloud services”. But if the first two concepts were generally well accepted in business, then the cloud for many managers are still somewhat abstract and intimidating.

The most familiar and common definition of cloud services sounds like “providing end users with remote dynamic access to services, computing resources and applications (including operating systems and infrastructure) over the Internet.” Usually it is the mention of the word “Internet” discourages managers, creating a feeling of insecurity of their information assets. It is necessary to replace the phrase “through the Internet” to “anywhere”, implying, in particular, and the enterprise network, it becomes clear that the company is already in the cloud. As a rule, in large and medium-sized organizations key business applications have already been consolidated within a single data center or central office, are accessible from both the local network or from remote offices. This is also a cloud, it is simply a small and their own – so-called private.

Private or public cloud providers?

Types of clouds, by and large, only two – both private and public. To the public include proprietary platform clouds major IT players (Google, Microsoft, IBM, HP, Amazon, etc.) and cloud services offered by various independent service providers (typically, service providers and broadband providers). Private clouds are managed by its own IT services and provide services for internal use and for use by customers and partners.

From the perspective of the end user, it is not much different from what the clouds get service  from, the private or public. If you watch from the owner of information resources, it should be to seek a reasonable balance between convenience and cost. Creating a private cloud will allow the company to form their own directory services and their quality indicators, full control over information assets. But this organization must bear the related costs (personnel, equipment, software, etc.). Use of public clouds allow the enterprise to reduce the cost of maintenance and IT infrastructure, but the range of services will limit the opportunities for cloud providers.

According to studies, revenue in the area of  “cloud computing” technologies in 2013 will amount to 150 billion dollars. Many businesses have already implemented the transfer of corporate data in the cloud, many more companies are going to do it soon, but a lot of people are worried about the security of data stored in the cloud. Of course, no one can guarantee absolute security in any computing environment, however, the transition to “cloud” technology can take certain measures to help in reducing the risk of data loss to a minimum. For example, when choosing cloud providers, it is important to look not only at firms’ pricing power, but also implemented its security protocols. It is important to understand that the transition to “cloud” technologies may be safer than the standard internal solutions as the industry has invested billions of dollars in information security.

In public, the cloud system end-user has a high level of automation. Customers can place their applications in the cloud and manage all the user settings of your services. Public “cloud” has no such visibility as a private cloud has. If you are using a public “clouds” you give the placement of computing resources in to control. In particular the “cloud” resources are used by fewer people and they have a higher level of management. Depending on these differences to safety management in these environments, specific practices.

The first and most important step is the installation procedure of authorization. For the selection of the password, it requires randomization procedure and the need for strict adherence to protocols that create passwords for all staff. It’s amazing, but many people still use words like “password” or a combination of digits “12345″ as a password to access key data sources. Application of the standard LDAP and administrator credentials you can really protect your information.

Having dealt with the internal procedures of authorization, you should pay close attention to outsourcing partners. Whether they are holding your security protocols and perform background checks, whether they are complying with any other measures that protect and control the transmission of information. Information sharing is crucial, especially in the case of public computing environments. Providers must use the best encryption tools to keep your information safe and in usable condition. They must also provide administration services to the highest level, including installing firewalls and advanced detection of network attacks.

Legal aspects of data storage in the cloud hosting

There are many legal problems connected with the storage of information, especially data identifying a person. Despite the fact that information is in the cloud, it is still somewhere to be placed and there are rules that govern its movement. In some countries, such as India, imposed very strict requirements for safety information, which limit the storage and movement of information. Choose a provider who is knowledgeable about these rules, and could, if necessary, too quickly move your information to comply with these requirements. According to a study, more than forty states have official regulations governing the methods of protection of personal data (PII). Should give preference to well-known providers of cloud services, which have systemic means of controlling the movement of PII under its “cloud” network.

Many cloud providers enter the market, not having sufficient experience in the field of human resources policies and technologies. That is why in order to obtain a comprehensive understanding of the work of a company, should ask more than a dozen issues. One of the most important – the question of who will have the right to access and transfer your information. Whether they will notify you about any breach of security, or just hide them.

Does this outsourcing company allow you to optionally create an emergency data center for disaster?

The contract may provide higher levels of encryption standards for data storage. In addition to this “cloud” provider should be familiar with the work of any other suitable provider of SaaS and its technologies. Your business depends on many different outsourcing companies, one way or another address with your information, so it is important that the information management system have no weak links.

Outsourcing companies need to adhere to certain standards, assigning passwords that reduce the likelihood of hacking. In the case of multiplayer “cloud” above average risk, and therefore cloud providers must show that they use management tools that provide separation to reduce the risks.

Conclusion

Achieving a high level of safety in public and private “clouds” requires confidentiality requirements and user access. New solutions for information storage and management come to market fairly quickly, and as these tools are introduced, users will get additional protection for their information.

In meteorology there is a detailed classification of clouds, numbering at least 12 species. IT professionals do not lag behind in this regard- they can conventionally distinguish several categories of “cloud services“.  It should be noted that the conventional classification generates a certain amount of confusion in concepts, so it’s important to give at least a brief description of categories.

There are three major types of cloud-based technologies: SaaS; software as a service, PaaS; Platform as a Service and IaaS: infrastructure as a service.

SaaS Model – A lease of the software, which is developed by the service provider, and the user can access it via the Internet. This model allows us to reduce the cost of implementation and maintenance of software. A striking example – popular with the U.S. system of Customer Relationship Management Salesforce.com. Paying for its services in proportion to consumption, you can use the ready business process for working with clients. This completely eliminates the need for costly implementation of the system in operation.

PaaS Model involves the provision of a platform as a service, for example, to develop or test software. Thus, any organization can get the missing computational resources for the development and subsequent operation of their own applications. Google App Engine is one of the leaders in such services.

Finally, in case IaaS as services are provided by the hardware resources (infrastructure). IaaS feature is that, this model consists of three main elements – a hardware component (servers, networking equipment and other), the operating system and middle-ware software to manage the first two components. Such services are in a cloud of ESDS “Data Center“.

From my experience I can say that, from the three models of the cloud on the market, today, IaaS is in demand. Gradually, the demand will grow for other models, but so far IaaS is closer to potential customers. One reason for this phenomenon lies in the fact that “cloud” infrastructure involve the use of virtualization technology, which allows you to create boundaries between different users of the cloud.

This is especially important when it comes to the use of cloud computing for large customers.

In addition to the above types, it is important to distinguish between the “cloud” type property – public clouds and private clouds. So, if the company rents a “cloud” from a third party provider, it works and stores its data in the public cloud. This option is suitable for companies in the sector of small and medium businesses (SMBs), as well as for projects in the initial stages of development (start-up). If the company creates its own data processing center (DPC) or within an existing data center expands ‘cloud’ for the needs of its employees, affiliates, etc., then it is private cloud. The second option is suitable for large companies who are interested in reducing costs to ensure the manageability of the infrastructure and software. Thus, in this case the “cloud” is an excellent way to centralize all the IT systems of large holding. Using a private cloud, the company receives all the benefits of the cloud and thus has the ability to completely control its software and content.

It is important to note that, it is economically feasible to create a “cloud” that is only based on its own infrastructure. They can also extract some benefits from the use of public cloud, for example, in test mode to get acquainted with the proposed business applications in order to make the final decision on the necessity of their implementation in their own information environment.

When we talk about cloud computing, we also talk about the types of clouds that we consume (utilize). You remember the taxonomy to cloud, we presented some more posts ago, here on the blog right? We talked about IaaS, PaaS, SaaS and its services. We talk about the capabilities present in a cloud platform exemplifying its own resources of the Windows Azure platform.

Now I would like to highlight the types of clouds that can work. At this point, we can think of public cloud, private cloud and dedicated cloud computing.

Public cloud services are the offers we have on the general market through providers like Microsoft, Amazon, Salesforce.com, IBM, Google, ESDS, among others. In this type of supply, access is via the internet and share data centers with various companies in the world.

Thinking about a more customized solution, private cloud services can deliver the benefits of dynamic provisioning and economy of scale, leveraging the infrastructure of data centers already invested by the company. Thus, companies that own their own data centers can evaluate the model of virtualization and provisioning with the creation of a private cloud, which is only available to users and enterprise applications. A limitation of this model is that, beyond the scalability, it is limited to the size of the investment already made in own data center, the company remains responsible for the routine administration of physical hardware resources, as well as software development and upgrades needed.

Finally, dedicated clouds can offer the benefits of abstraction in a data center market with the isolation and customization that a company can imagine. This type of offer usually involves security matters, as like local users (on-premise) with the users and applications placed in the cloud and allows integrated scenarios, highly flexible hardware and provisioning for businesses.

From these three sets of clouds, it is natural to think of the clouds by addressing issues of authentication, authorization and security between users of each room booked.

A question we hear in the event of Cloud Computing counts worth and even it is really worthwhile to talk about public cloud, since there are still some doubts about safety and availability.
It is generally observed that large firms are more likely to begin the path toward Cloud Computing through private clouds rather than public. A survey by the IDC showed that the classification for “very appealing or appealing” private clouds had 64% response versus 30% of public clouds. Why? Thinking out loud, I can imagine some reasons … One is that public clouds offer many benefits, but then present the greatest challenges of security and privacy.

In addition, many internal applications from companies have a high degree of predictability of demand, minimizing the value of the model cloud. Applications with demands are less predictable from those that interact directly with customers, such as e-commerce as a sales promotion can affect demand in the blink of an eye. These applications have much to gain from the elastic model of the clouds. But, these applications not only demand high security requirements, as they are highly dependent on integration with other applications. So, if we put them in a public cloud, it could generate more problems than benefits, at least for now.

Another observation is that the motivations for adoption of public clouds are different from those considered for private clouds. For public clouds the main motivator is to reduce cost of ownership software, hardware, staffing and data center). And the model of “pay-as-you-go” is one of the most cited in research for adoption of these clouds.

Imagine the following situation: A company has a peak demand of 500 servers, but the average consumption amounts to a usage of 300 servers. The cost per day is 300 x 24 or 7200 servers per hour. But the company sets its data center to the peak load and pays 500 x 24 or 12,000 servers per hour. It is a factor 1.7 higher than necessary. In the model pay-as-you-go pay for what you actually use and so, if the TCO is less than 1.7 times the cost of purchasing and maintaining servers, it is beneficial to use a public cloud.

The main question concerning the clouds is the public security and data privacy. Interestingly, ESDS offers much more security and operate under very strict security policies and adherence to standards and auditing standards.

The result is that public clouds tend to attract first the interest of small and medium enterprises, while large enterprises will focus, at first in private clouds.

Let’s look at some of these situations to better understand this phenomenon:

A) A small business does not have sufficient scale to virtualize and consolidate their servers to operate in private cloud, as in a larger company. It may, for example, aggregate demand of its business units into one data center businesses and achieve high levels of server utilization by adopting the model of private cloud. The alternative for small companies is to adopt a public cloud.

B) Large firms have better bargaining power with suppliers of technology, achieving better prices for their hardware and software assets. Public Cloud Hosting supplies this deficiency for small businesses, offering an economy of scale that is reflected in lower prices for use of computing resources.

C) It is hard to hire greater technical staff prepared for the challenges of adopting new technology, security, etc. for small business owners, so adoption of public clouds can keep their business up.

Anyway, much water will roll in the world of cloud computing. We can think about future scenarios, where small firms are mostly working in public clouds and clouds in large corporations or private hybrid, with part of its processing in clouds part in public and private clouds. In this context, the proper role of the data center was being modified. We can imagine a data center acting as a broker, with their users requesting resources and allocating the data center, either from private cloud or in a public cloud. The user would not worry where the resources would be provided, he would only make the request for either an application or a virtual server. Where the broker or data center will provide resources.

In short, cloud computing will change everything …