Balancing Pros and Cons of the Cloud for Enterprise and SMBs
Whatever type of business you are, the decision to move a part or all of your business to the cloud is challenging. To complicate matters, there is always the question of which type of cloud you need to use: public, private or hybrid. So how does anyone make this decision? Here are a few things to consider when balancing out the needs of your business while looking at the various pros and cons for each of the three types of cloud hosting solutions.
Virtual Servers Benefits
As of 2012, Gartner is predicting that 30% of all enterprises will have moved at least a part of their business to the cloud. The capability to scale on demand to any capacity and to perform that scalability at will continues to draw more businesses to the benefits of virtual servers in the cloud.
One of the biggest advantages of cloud computing is the flexibility to ramp up or down according to the flow of traffic. Disk space can be allocated as the need increases and then released as soon as the demand begins to ebb, with great cost efficiency.
Virtualization gives cloud virtual servers the ability for replication. It also allows them to launch quickly and easily, allowing greater flexibility for IT management. With the growing popularity of viral campaigns, video and social networking, the cloud has become a vital part of any organization. Digital marketing initiatives can create huge divergent swings of traffic. With the cloud, companies have the flexibility during a new marketing campaign when they need more servers, to expand to the capacity it requires until the end of the campaign and then ramp back down.
In a private cloud, the growth of the business is not affected by a need to change platforms or architecture upon expansion. They can add capacity to accommodate the increase of clients effortlessly and automate resources dynamically. In addition, virtual servers can have the physical machine or hardware node segmented into smaller units allowing different functions or even separate systems to be run on the same virtual server.
This streamlining of operations makes virtual servers perfect for businesses that are on the move and growing. It doesn’t matter if you are an SME that is getting geared up for expansion or a large enterprise that needs to outsource IT in-house infrastructure management, or begin a national marketing program. You can simplify operations and reduce costs at the same time.
For some there is always the concern of security risks, but these can be allayed through the use of duplicate servers and firewalls. Your cloud host provider can create layers of redundancy with backup levels and even SAN configured in redundant pairs to reduce the security risks.
Cloud Security Concerns
There have been countless reports of how the major reason many companies have not yet made the move to the cloud is because of the concern for security. It has probably not helped much that the media continues to report security breaches by high profile brands bringing negative publicity to the cloud community.
Sony is a good example of this negative reporting, as early stories pointed to cloud-based security structures as the cause of leaked data. But there is no specific evidence to suggest that the cloud servers were at the heart of the security problem. And while it is true that there have been other security breaches in various cloud platforms, in the case of Sony and numerous other security breaches, the end result would have been the same if the server had resided in-house.
The main difference between an in-house server and a cloud server is that the cloud server is run across the internet. This does pose some vulnerability, but not one that cannot be guarded against in a similar manner as with an in-house server. Private clouds are the most secure as they can be fully protected and cloud clients can be assured that their data is safe.
Public clouds, because of the nature of multi-tenancy servers, do pose a slightly higher security risk. However, a discussion with your host provider can clarify the security measures taken and which cloud server infrastructure is right for your business. If you are concerned about the jurisdiction of the country where the servers that hold your data reside, talk to your host provider.
Our newsletters and blogs are written to provide you with tools and information to meet your IT and cloud solution needs. We invite you to engage in our online community by following us on Twitter @GMOCloud and ‘Liking’ us on Facebook.
