Build Your Cloud Strategy before adopting

Recently, I have been seeing reports of a number of companies facing issues with Cloud. Upon closer inspection, it seems that those companies seemed to have adopted Cloud without really having a strategy or planning out the Cloud roadmap.

The main reason being that it is easy to adopt Cloud nowadays-- just go on the web, search for a vendor and pay!! Bingo, you are on Cloud!!

But you seem to be missing the basic tenet of management-- have a plan, have a strategy!! Without a plan or a srategy you will end up in a mess. Remember Cloud gives you easy access to tech and apps, but it's not magic wand to take care of your unknown issues.

So plan, build a stratgey and then adopt Cloud!! And then you will see the magic of Cloud 

BaaS for Mobile apps developers

BaaS or Backend as a Service has come as boon for the mobile app development industry. The mobile developer and organizations are extremely skilled in creating or developing customer facing interfaces, but the back-end becomes a challenge for them.

BaaS can potentially take care of all the back-end infrastructure requirements of the mobile apps industry, and enable the organizations to focus on their core skill. Interestingly, back-end-as-a-service not only gives you the flexibility and scalability but also provides you with an integration platform into the existing enterprise services.

This Cloud service has captured a niche market, and is exciting enough to make a large number of vendors add it to their lists of growing Cloud offerings.

Manage Your Cloud Access with Simple Cloud Identity Management

Identity Management is a big task for the Cloud solution providers. Currently out of the 4 As (authentication, authorization, account management and audit logging) of Identity Management, Authentication is only usually used to provide access to cloud solutions. So for enterprises it is a big challenge to determine which standard protocol to use to create/delete/control/manage cloud identities.

The Simple Cloud Identity Management (SCIM) protocol seems to be ideal for Cloud identity management. It reportedly enables smooth integration and also easy to develop, and is based on strong authentication, authorization, and privacy principles.

Please do share your experiences with Simple Cloud Identity Management!

The recent Gartner forecasts show that Cloud is on a high in India. Here are the pointers of the report:

 

• The public cloud services market predicted to grow at 32.4 percent in 2012 to total US$ 326.2 million.
• Software-as-a-service (SaaS) is the largest segment, and is expected to grow to US$ 115.6 million in 2012.

• Infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) is expected to grow from US$ 35.2 million in 2011 to US$ 42.7 million in 2012.
• BpaaS (business process-as-a-service) is expected to grow to US$ 112.1 million in 2012 from US$ 90.3 million in 2011.
• By 2016, cloud computing services will become the largest single segment within the public cloud services market in India, growing to US$ 140.8 million, and accounting for about 14 percent of total public cloud services spending.

EC: Improve Cloud Contracts

I have often emphasized on the need for clear and simple contracts and SLAs for the Cloud. Many of the cloud vendors provide contracts and present SLAs that can confuse and mislead the organizations looking to adopt cloud solutions.

The European Commission (EC) has woken up to the fact that Cloud computing needs better contracts. EC has asked the cloud firms to provide improved contracts which can help avert costly legal disputes and do away with privacy concerns. This step by EC will give a major boost to the cloud industry which can help organizations cut cost but improve their technology. This can also help the cloud industry help build trust among the organization that are apprehensive of adopting cloud due to still floating rumors about security & privacy concern.

Secure Your Personal data on Cloud

Read this excellent article Tips on secure cloud computing. As you move your personal data to the cloud, it’s very important that you secure them. If you lose your personal data, that would be your biggest loss. So secure them; and the steps taken, can be very simple and basic . When you walk out of your house, you close your doors, windows and then lock the front door securely; maybe, you even put on your security system so as to ensure that robbers/thieves cannot go inside the house when you are away. Basically, you will have to go with the same mentality to protect your data in the cloud, and to ensure against loss/theft.

High on Cloud

North Bridge Venture Partners recently announced the results of its second annual Future of Cloud Computing Survey. The 2012 survey captures current industry perceptions, sentiments and emerging trends in cloud computing.

 

Key Findings in the Survey include:

• Companies are accelerating their trust in cloud solutions.
• Scalability remains the top reason for adopting the cloud. Business agility ranked second among drivers for cloud adoption.
• Security remains the primary inhibitor to adoption in the burgeoning cloud marketplace , followed by regulatory compliance and vendor lock-in.
• Software as a service (SaaS) is currently, and is expected to remain the primary type of cloud investment.
• Platform as a service (PaaS) and infrastructure as a service (IaaS) will see significant growth in the next five years.
• The top 3 areas in which “cloud formations” are coming together are backup and archiving, business continuity, collaboration tools, and big data processing.
• Cloud users are shifting sentiments with regard to public vs. hybrid cloud platforms.
• With an increase in trust of the cloud, big data is emerging as a major focus for vendors and end-users alike.