GMO Cloud

Attaining Security in the Cloud

When it comes to cloud hosting, trust earns the top spot in its core operations. This is primarily due to clients entrusting private information to a service provider that controls data on the cloud. Giving a third party the authority to store and use your data may increase vulnerability to loss, theft, abuse or tampering. As fear and apprehension unsurprisingly proliferates among potential users, some words of reassurance are needed.

Whether using a single or multiple cloud service providers, a customer could be at risk when security systems are not in place. Some companies are opting to work with multiple cloud hosting providers to store their data. Through this setup, when one server crashes, they can still have a back-up of lost data on another server with a different provider. When data is on multiple servers around the world however, there is a higher risk of hacking. But this does not necessarily mean that your data is safer on a single provider.

When selecting a cloud host provider, you must look for different types of security measures that they could offer in your contract. This should involve protection not only for your software applications but also for hardware. One of the basic security approaches is encryption: data being seen by authorized persons only. Encryption must be required for static data as well as that transmitted to various servers around the world. With encryption, it is paramount that key management is restricted to trusted individuals only and that contingency plans are available when key access has been compromised. Highly advanced encryption methods could however be too expensive for the customer, which is why companies can opt to build their own.

Access control to information must also be set up depending on the kind of information and level of confidentiality. When policies and procedures are strictly employed with penalties for internal non-compliance, then there is a better chance that data will remain secure. Firewalls have also been widely utilized to ensure that networks are not being attacked by malicious net individuals. Exposure to harmful websites must also be minimized while authentication tokens, certifications and log in challenges must be included in their offerings.

Physical security is also a main concern in protecting data from being accessed or damaged. The servers being used must be located in a highly secure place that can only be accessed by authorized individuals. Password codes, alarm systems and cameras must be in place. The hardware itself must be damage-proof if possible in the event of attackers or natural disasters. When using external media such as flash drives, encryption could also be implemented in tandem with restrictions on the allowable media.

As you choose the cloud service provider to run your applications online, you have to consider all these mentioned security measures before signing that contract. Make sure the cloud service provider prioritizes transparency in order for trust to be earned and sustained. Visibility in all aspects of operations allows you to monitor and identify possible issues and risks in security. When cloud host providers remain open and communicative, customers feel safer to entrust their data for a longer period and even at a higher price.

GMO Cloud has a multi-level security strategy which includes operations, physical infrastructure and network among other factors. This way, customers are ensured that security is a top priority in service provision. Visit the Security page to have a better idea of the company’s strategy in keepingd data safe.

Be Part of Our Cloud Conversation

Our articles are written to provide you with tools and information to meet your IT and cloud solution needs. Join us on Facebook and Twitter.

About the Guest Author:

Rodolfo Lentejas, Jr. is a fulltime freelance writer based in Toronto. He is the founder of the PostSckrippt, a growing online writing business dedicated to producing top quality, original and fresh content. To know more about him, please visit www.postsckrippt.ca. Like him on Facebook or follow him on Twitter, Google+ and Pinterest.

Cloud Hosting Changes the Game

The billion dollar empire gaming industry has hit a major breakthrough with cloud hosting. Hosted on various virtual servers, gamers experience a new high with easier access and lower costs. With cloud gaming, data and applications are online without the need for multiple, high-maintenance and troublesome physical servers or machines.

Instead of purchasing high-end computers with large capacity to play the in-demand games, anyone can relax at home with just a laptop, tablet or mobile phone to access their favorite video game or challenge gamers across the globe. Simultaneously managing millions of players in thousands of locations is a truly astonishing feature of cloud gaming. Not only are these virtual servers able to withstand high traffic without crashing or delay, they can also deliver the rich graphics key to attracting more players for an even bigger profit.

These immense technological requirements of the gaming industry fit perfectly with the services that cloud hosts offer. Since players won’t need to go to physical or online stores to buy software, chips or consoles, convenience is at the tip of their fingers. It is definitely cheaper with an affordable monthly fee, no installation required, and no time wasted on downloading files. Though console manufacturing companies have hit some walls, gamers and companies obviously benefit from this economical technology.

Just recently, Sony has joined the bandwagon of cloud gaming by acquiring GaiKai, a cloud gaming provider on different platforms for a whopping $380 million. This move by the makers of the popular Playstation could be perceived as a contingency plan to increase sales by investing in cheaper gaming services. This may also be a consequence of having lower sales in their console products since more consumers are preferring online-based games due to their convenience, flexibility and affordability.

The emergence of these cloud gaming services means gaming companies can power only what they need to boost their business. A common feature available today is unlimited virtual servers allowing gaming companies to expand offerings while providing stability. Scalability options have also been an enticing feature for game networks which need to scale up or down depending on how heavy a load is.

Many cloud hosting providers offer a traditional fixed prices regardless of usage. However, a number of cloud hosting providers are offering flexible terms depending on the resources used. If you are starting your own gaming company, conduct more research on which cloud hosting provider could be more beneficial to your end. Some cloud hosting services offer monthly fees for a certain period with no charges for initial set-up. But if you don’t want to be tied to a long-term commitment, you can look for companies offering services paid by the hour.

For gaming company masterminds, mobility is definitely a plus when managing growing business on the cloud. It is thus important to choose a cloud hosting provider that allows you to access and control every facet of cloud gaming business anytime and anywhere. This type of convenience is often a top priority for small to medium sized gaming businesses expanding internationally. Since travel is inevitable, being able to make decisions and implement changes on laptops or phones is essential in selecting a cloud hosting provider. These evolving offerings only make the future of cloud hosting even brighter.

Data center location is important for easy access to websites. For gaming companies, it is crucial that they subscribe to a cloud provider that can offer this function. GMO Cloud has strategically placed its servers in hubs that allow easy access to websites from anywhere in the world. Visit the Data Center page of this site to find out more about the locations. GMO Cloud also continually looks for good locations to better serve customers.

Be Part of Our Cloud Conversation

Our articles are written to provide you with tools and information to meet your IT and cloud solution needs. Join us on Facebook and Twitter.

About the Guest Author:

Rodolfo Lentejas, Jr. is a fulltime freelance writer based in Toronto. He is the founder of the PostSckrippt, a growing online writing business dedicated to producing top quality, original and fresh content. To know more about him, please visit www.postsckrippt.ca. Like him on Facebook or follow him on Twitter, Google+ and Pinterest.

The Bright Future of Cloud Computing

Cloud computing is widely regarded as the fourth industrial revolution in information technology. There is no doubt that in the next decade, computing infrastructures will be largely cloud-based, triggering big changes in this young industry. Just as computer scientists in the 1960′s regarded something like iPad as mere science fiction, engineers of today have great trouble speculating on the future of cloud.

Huge growth of some kind is projected in the next decade. Analysts at Forrester, for example, have predicted that cloud computing will grow into a $150 billion dollar industry in the next eight years. Although there are barriers to overcome, widespread use of cloud computing technology in most companies’ IT infrastructures will lead to a generalized change in all computing-related fields. Discussing the possible impacts of these changes is a great way to make sure your company is well-prepared.

The Total Separation of Hardware and Software

The most important change will probably be SaaS becoming the norm, rather than an exception. Software will no longer be tied to hardware, leading to a radically different way of conceiving IT infrastructure. In fact, most companies will be unable to tie down their IT infrastructure, pointing instead to their cloud computing service providers. Infrastructure will, essentially, become invisible. Front-end applications built on platforms that are essentially a service will demolish user-end hardware restrictions entirely.

Increased cloud processing power will highlight the real clout of HaaS, with powerful modular software that can take advantage of the flexibility and intricacy afforded by the cloud. This will mean a radical change in software development, placing a large emphasis on the development of very large applications with multiple components that can be modified independently. And all this without having to shut down the program – modular software. This will require a sizable shift in programming mindsets and IT management. A likely model for future software interactions can be found in current social media networks. Software will have to become social, interacting with different hardware and applications constantly, much like Facebook users “like” different videos, posts, or pictures.

Lower Processing and Implementation Costs

For businesses, this means lower hardware costs and cheaper access to cloud technology. Thanks to current cloud projects, such as the Open Compute Project, businesses will have access to powerful infrastructure that can be maintained quickly and easily while being invisible to the end user. Prices will also be driven down with the coming of low-power ARM 64-bit capable chips, which will soon be launched. These processors will cut down on energy bills, leading to dramatically lower data center prices. It will not only be ARM; competitors are working hard to bring their chips to the same power usage standards, easily setting a trend for future data center processing.

Preparing for the Fourth Industrial IT Revolution

The greatest barrier to the future of cloud computing is actually erected by the industry and its vendors. The technology is there; the main problem will be developing the necessary openness and interaction to implement upcoming breakthroughs. Two things will be needed: full technical disclosure, and clear industry standards. The future of cloud computing has been predicated on breaking down computing to its individual parts and having them interact freely. However, it will also be necessary for everyone in the industry to interact in the same way. Of course, this will definitely be an uphill battle. Vendors that can charge for proprietary technology will oppose introductions of standards while full technical disclosure facilitates the entry of market newcomers. However, the outlook is quite promising, with companies such as Huawei and HP joining the Open Compute Project, as well as open source and hardware projects. If anything, the real debate in the future will be finding out where to draw the line on exactly how open vendors and businesses will need to be.

As an industry leader and trusted brand in a country where technology is highly regarded, GMO Cloud is at the forefront of this IT Revolution and hopes to help the public by continually innovating on products and services that will ease the way to a technologically-oriented society. Visit GMO Cloud’s main page and read more about cloud hosting and its benefits.

Be Part of Our Cloud Conversation

Our articles are written to provide you with tools and information to meet your IT and cloud solution needs. Join us on Facebook and Twitter.

About the Guest Author:

Nida Rasheed is a freelance writer and owner of an outsourcing company, Nida often finds herself wanting to write about the subjects that are closest to her heart. She lives in Islamabad, Pakistan and can be found on Twitter @nidarasheed.

Cloud Computing: Economies of Scale and Innovation in Tourism

The adoption of cloud computing in the tourism industry can guarantee economies of scale and innovation.

Tourism Ireland believes in these possibilities. It has moved its entire IT infrastructure to the cloud on a whopping five-year contract worth 850,000 Euros.

Tourism Ireland stands to gain a lot from this development, as the company manages over a dozen websites in over 20 countries. These sites provide tourist information for countless visitors to Ireland. As information handled increases, Tourism Ireland seeks to reduce cost by moving its erstwhile in-house IT structure to a privately-managed cloud. Subsequently, the company has, by far, succeeded in cutting its hosting and energy cost by fifty percent.

This strategic move guarantees both economies of scale and greater innovation for the company. Hosting its IT infrastructure in the cloud affords Tourism Ireland the unique opportunity of concentrating only on the internal activity of management and business expansion. Niall Powderly, head of IT Infrastructure of the cloud company hosting Tourism Ireland’s IT system, declared that: “For enterprise organizations like Tourism Ireland, the (new) infrastructure offers levels of efficiency and opportunities to innovate that would have been unimaginable a few years ago.” Therefore, Tourism Ireland operates optimally through the centralization of its IT systems that have no negative impact on the company’s internal and external activities.

Tourism Ireland achieves efficiency by creating a common resource pool via a combination of network, servers, storage facility and customer-centered services, all hosted in the cloud. This action definitely helps the company save on the cost of maintaining IT personnel and other contracted consultants.

Niall Powderly advised: “Organizations that were reluctant to move IT off-premise are now looking at it because …networks are faster and more affordable. You can now move infrastructure to a data center at a very reasonable price and have no performance impact.”

Three significant merits of adopting cloud computing in tourism industry stand out from Niall’s statements above:

• Speed: Tourism business requires the use of many interconnected computers that are needed to pass important travel information to potential customers. Fast internet connection and computing operations are constantly required to guarantee optimal performance.

• Affordability: Cloud computing is affordable and helps cut back on recurrent expenses, especially in the area of maintaining in-house IT structure, constantly buying the latest software, hardware and the payment of wages to IT personnel.

• No Performance Impact: There are no observable impacts on the IT performance during and after moving a company’s IT system to the cloud. In other words, the quality of services rendered by the company after its adoption of cloud computing would not be affected, even in the short term.

Tourism Ireland’s action will motivate other tourism companies to sign up for cloud computing. Cloud computing will help companies in the tourism industry devise appropriate methods for managing their customers’ data, operational processes and business expansion in a way that cost efficiency and optimum performance can be guaranteed. The trend is likely to continue as many firms discover the potential gains of cloud computing strategies and technology.

Companies in this type of industry requires a heavy duty cloud provider that can accommodate the unexpected increase of resource demand; one that provides the highest possible resiliency of data flow and a reliable network – much like what GMO Cloud offers. Read more about this feature on the Network page.

Be Part of Our Cloud Conversation

Our articles are written to provide you with tools and information to meet your IT and cloud solution needs. Join us on Facebook and Twitter.

About the Guest Writer:

Jerry Olasakinju, a Bachelor of Technology (B.Tech) degree holder, is a passionate researcher and writer whose interest in everything computing is unparalleled. He blogs about his literary works at http://jerryolasakinju.blogspot.jp/

Current Status of IT Disaster Recovery in the Asia Pacific

A recent survey of more than 2000 IT decision makers in Japan and the Asia Pacific provided a snapshot of common causes of downtime and data loss at a country-specific level. It also shed light on locations and solutions used for off-site data back-up and storage, areas of IT spending on data storage and disaster recovery, and the primary reasons for wanting to move away from tape storage to alternative solutions in the cloud.

Data Loss and Downtime

According to the Disaster Recovery Survey 2012:  Asia Pacific and Japan, which was conducted by the research company Vanson Bourne and commissioned by EMC, the top three causes of data loss included data corruption, hardware issues and power loss. Sixty percent of IT decision makers indicated hardware issues are pivotal to downtime and data loss, whereas 48 percent cited corrupt data. Almost 45 percent held power-loss responsible – the highest percentage being in Singapore. This is surprising as power outages are rare in this region, perhaps hinting at problems with the variable quality of IT infrastructure deployed in enterprises. In Japan, 22 percent bemoaned loss of power, while data corruption and hardware failure was frowned upon by 52 percent.  The amount of data loss which occurred over the last 12 months was just less than 625GB.

Data Storage

Another key issue posed in the survey concerned data storage and off-site backup locations. 57 percent reported that off-site data storage is performed at another company location within the country. Third party providers from the same country are generally used for data storage and backup in the company’s primary location.

The highest response was yielded by the question of whether enterprises are seeking cloud storage solutions and online backup as the result of the increased availability of high-speed broadband.  Seventy percent wanted to move away from tape backup to alternative data storage solutions due to the capability of faster backups (50%), durability and life cycle (41%) and the speed of data recovery and system restores (42%).

In terms of IT spending on disaster recovery, most participants spend 10 to 12 percent of their budget on disaster recovery initiatives. Over 50 percent are obligated to have a disaster recovery plan in place to meet insurance and compliance guidelines and regulations.

Despite the differences in how countries in the Asia Pacific region deal with data storage and backup, there is at least one relative commonality. Specifically, they deal with an increasing amount of data to relocate within the same backup windows. According to the study, many enterprises in the Asia Pacific region still rely on tape backup systems (38%) or disks (38%). The survey also indicated that a high percentage of enterprises (53%) have plans to migrate from tape to a faster and more efficient cloud solution in order to improve data backup, storage and recovery initiatives.

Cloud providers that companies should look for are preferably those that can offer additional services that can assist them in the shift to the Cloud. GMO Cloud has a set of add-on services including set up, which saves manpower costs and of course, time.

Be Part of Our Cloud Conversation

Our articles are written to provide you with tools and information to meet your IT and cloud solution needs. Join us on Facebook and Twitter.

About the Guest Author:

Aeyne Schriber has more than two decades of accumulated experience in IT security, computer technology, and internet marketing, including technology education and administration field both on the public school and college level. She works worldwide helping companies establish an online presence from small businesses to large enterprises. Her skills as a published copywriter and marketer also include consulting and training corporate personnel and entrepreneurs. For more details, visit www.digitalnewmediamarketing.com