What should be considered before adopting cloud?

Don’t you wonder what you should do before rolling out cloud solutions? Well, a wired article provides some few guiding principles as you start your cloud journey.

1.     Set clear objectives.

2.     Consider when (and whether) to integrate existing data and systems.

3.     Research solutions online and start for free.

4.     Consider all costs, not just initial purchase price.

Why adopt Cloud?

Read an interesting article. It listed the five reasons for which makes business decision makers feel the cloud is critical to their businesses’ success:

1.     Cloud offers better insight.

2.     Cloud helps collaboration.

3.     Cloud drives better engagement.

4.     Speed!

5.     Cloud benefits are measurable and pay for themselves.

 Please click on the link below for more information.

Process Improvement Methodologies---Organizations should decide

Very often, people tend to ask “which is the best improvement methodology to adopt?’

Though my bet lies with Lean, but I would say “it actually depends on what exactly does your organization need”. People are usually confused about the most spoken and used improvement methodologies – Lean, Six Sigma and Theory of Constraints (TOC).

I recently read an article which very interestingly differentiate the three as shown below:

Process Improvement Methodologies	Focus	Result
Six Sigma	focus on reducing variation and  achieving uniform process results in less waste, less throughput time and less inventory	If we focus on reducing variation,   then we will have more uniform process output.
Lean	focus on waste and flow time results in less variation, uniform output and less inventory	If we focus on waste removal, then flow time will improve.
TOC	focus on constraints and increased throughput results in less inventory and a different accounting system	If we focus on constraints, then throughput volume will improve.

 

Capacity Management Important for Private Cloud

Read an interesting article Top tips for calculating the cost of a private cloud. It highlights the importance of capacity management in private cloud.

Accordingly to Dr. Owen Rogers, digital economist at analyst firm 451 Research, one of the most important tasks is to consider how capacity will be added over time, and how much it will cost. However, this is also one of the least considered areas when weighing up the costs involved in moving to a private cloud, he warns.

“A private cloud is ultimately a fixed capacity, and its utilisation will vary depending on the behaviour of its applications and the end-users using it,” he says. “From a cost-efficiency point of view, the best situation is when the entire capacity of the private cloud is utilised, so the unit cost per virtual machine is the smallest.”

It is really surprising to see organizations going ahead without much focus on proper capacity management process or plans as they go ahead with private cloud. But issues arise when they scale up and operations become massive, and that’s when the cost and everything spirals out of control. That is the main reason why organization should first make a proper capacity management plan, look at current capacity and prepare for the capacity that would be required in the future. It is imperative to remember that capacity management is not a stop gap solution but an end-to-end process.

Cloud makes Knowledge Management easy

Knowledge Management is of extreme important for the organization. Gathering, collecting, storing, managing, monitoring and controlling the knowledge data is crucial for an organization’s success. Accessing the appropriate data assumes importance today’s scenario where the speed to market while maintaining the quality defines the success of a product or service. Easy access to those data is the key.

Today collaboration and sharing of knowledge data/content assumes importance. According to a new study by IDG Research, the vast majority of knowledge workers (86%) placed a very high level of importance on collaborating with internal coworkers and external stakeholders, and having access to the most up-to-date corporate information. This kind of collaboration as sharing of knowledge happens only when information can be easily accessed internally and externally. Hence, Cloud-based delivery models are vital as they enable highly scalable document storage and makes seamless collaboration a possibility. Once you store the data in a centralized storage server in cloud, users can easily access, manage, share, view and update the data; in addition, the organization can easily monitor and control those data and used the storage system as a knowledge management storage system enterprise-wise.

Latest Threats to Cloud

CSA (Computer Security Alliance) recently came out with 2013 Top Cloud Computing Security Threats. Cloud security has improved a lot, but threats still lurk; and as the ease to adopt the cloud applications becomes easier, vulnerabilities also increases as organizations might unknowingly expose themselves to malicious threats. Hence, it becomes extremely important for the organizations to keep an eye out for the threats mentioned by CSA. Following are the nine critical threats to cloud security (ranked in order of severity):

1. Data Breaches 
2. Data Loss 
3. Account Hijacking 
4. Insecure APIs 
5. Denial of Service 
6. Malicious Insiders 
7. Abuse of Cloud Services 
8. Insufficient Due Diligence 
9. Shared Technology Issues 

To protect your organization, check out CSA’s best practices guides, “Security Guidance for Critical Areas in Cloud Computing V.3” and “Security as a Service Implementation Guidance.”


The permanent and official location for Cloud Security Alliance Top Threats research is http://www.cloudsecurityalliance.org/topthreats .

Reap ITaaS Benefits

The following excerpts, from “Don’t Get Stuck on Your Virtualization Journey: Where to Focus Next”, are to understand the ways to reap benefits from ITaaS:

 

Based on a collection of research from businesses that have reached the ITaaS phase of the virtualization journey, the following best practices emerge:

•  Secure executive approval and funding for the IT-as-a-Service or cloud computing journey and transformation.
• Develop a roadmap or strategy that covers: hardware, network, storage infrastructure, virtualization technology, and management of those moving pieces, as well as an outline of the service offerings for end users.
• Shift IT’s focus from managing technology tasks to delivering services that align with business needs; service-centric IT organizations take the time to start first with the business requirements and the end-user point of view.
• Reinvent your IT organization and processes to align with the technological changes of virtualization and cloud computing. 
• Replace manual IT processes with automated ones; starting with a “managed virtualization” platform early can relieve the pain of integrating automation technologies later.
• Create a self-service catalogue of IT services for users and lines of business.

• Give IT management control over third-party cloud service providers along with internal IT services.