4 Crucial Measures before Cloud Implementation

Cloud adoption is moving on at a steady pace. Cloud implementation is a new approach for CIOs to create efficiency and transform their organization into new age powerhouse. But it is extremely important for the CIOs to keep an eye on the following:

• Service Level Agreement: It is not easy drafting a SLA for the cloud as there’s still a number of things unknown about it. But service with a SLA or OLA is like inviting trouble as then the quality of service or product cannot be ensured. Hence, it is extremely important for the CIOs to have standard Service Level Agreement machinery in place for the cloud to cover all the loopholes. 
• Security: It is still a major issue. But there are effective cloud security solutions and measures. The CIO should look for robust security solution and system to have a secured cloud infrastructure. 
• Compliance: It an extremely important step to be in compliant with all the regulatory rules, as failing these tests can be detrimental to growth as well as for the brand name of an organization. So complying with Sarbanes Oxley, SAS 70, HIPAA etc are extremely crucial. 
• Control: Having control over your system is important. That seems to be major reason for many organizations adopting private cloud although public cloud is far less expensive but equally effective.

Step wise cloud implementation for the CIOs

The questions that usually perplex the CIOs about Clod are: We should implement cloud now? Should I put everything on the cloud or just a part of our infrastructure or applications? Is it necessary to shift everything to the cloud? Will I get a fast ROI if I shift to cloud? Would it make sense for me to shift to cloud? The list obviously continues…..

Cloud is definitely a sure bet—both for your OPEX and CAPEX. Hence, in the long run you definitely cannot do without the Cloud. So what would be a safe approach that the CIO can take?

Please note that it is not imperative to shift everything to the cloud at one go; you can take a step by step approach. As per industry experts, use the hybrid model. Divide your applications accordingly: a) Apps that you can move straightway, without any worries. b) Apps that you can move at a later time period. c) Business critical apps that you don’t want to move and keep on premise.

So as you can see, you don’t have to go the whole to cloud. You take the less critical apps to cloud and keep the business critical apps on premise! This approach can save you money and time, as well as give you a peace of mind—knowing that you still have control over your business critical apps.

But please note that I am not saying that business critical apps should not go to the cloud. I am all for cloud, and believe in its potential and security measures. The approach I mentioned is the one that the cloud doubting CIOs can take and enable a smooth transition.

Cloud security competent

Is there really a difference between security for cloud and the on premise security? There seems to be just a thin red line between the two. You need to be careful and vigilant irrespective of where you store your data. So if you think staying on-premise instead of going to cloud will solve all your security problems—you are gravely mistaken!! In fact experts point out that traditional on-premise system with local client storage on company laptops are even more vulnerable to attack or other threats than cloud-based systems. In fact, organizations can benefit by leveraging the added security skills and resources of the SaaS and cloud computing service providers.

Many of the cloud providers have to go through security and compliance audits, and follow the best practices. Additionally, the experience of working with different organizations has given them the domain expertise and knowledge. So practically speaking they are more suited and equipped to protect your data.

So stop worrying about the security aspects of the cloud. In fact many solutions and measures that would get a cloud security are far better than your on-premise solutions.

Protect Your Data on Cloud

Came across a really interesting article in ComputerWorld- When Your Cloud Service Vanishes: How to protect your data. Today, we upload a lot of data online. But as we are aware nothing is permanent and over the course of time, some of the online data in the online space might disappear. Are we being quixotic in believing the cloud so much? How do we ensure the safety of our data in cloud? How do we ensure that our data is authentic and no unauthorized persons have gained access to it? How do we prevent such the problems.

Read the article to gain an interesting insight!

Cloud give you an competitive edge

Do Cloud give you an competitive edge? I definitely believe so.

A recent white paper from CIO magazine listed the following as cloud computing benefits:

• Replacing capital expenses with operating expenses
• Reduced hardware costs
• Reduced capacity needs
• Reduced technology risk
• Increased productivity
• Improved user experience
• Reduced environmental impact

So do you still have doubts?

IDC Says Cloud & Virtulization to optimize management overheads

Organizations and their CIOs are going the cloud and virtulization path. I am a strong proponent of that approach. A recent IDC report really excited me as it mentioned:

• Looking forward to the near future and the impact of the development of Security-as-a-Service (SaaS), IDC predicts cloud computing and virtualization technology to be the long-term development directions for optimizing management overheads in the security software market.
• Automation and centralized management is the ‘paradise’ that organizations are looking for.
• A cloud-based security software will provide a real time protection to the information flows with broad user coverage as it just requires one single point for automated patches and thus quicker in terms of definitions generating and updating.
• Meanwhile, security software solutions in the virtualized environment have become the fundamental equipment amongst solution providers, as the highway to virtualized environment getting established and in a faster speed with the propagation of cloud computing.