Technology is impacting companies daily, so it is difficult to understand why the business world is becoming more and more reliant on Information Technology (IT) solutions.  One of the most important investments that a business can make is in the safety, functionality, and effectiveness of their technology services.  Your business needs to be prepared for the worst-case-scenarios.  If not, the impact on mission-critical IT services from an outage of any kind may cause unforeseen damage to the company’s operations and credibility.

WHAT ARE CLOUD SERVICES?

A cloud service is any service made available to users on-demand via the Internet from a cloud computing provider’s services as opposed to being provided from a company’s own on-premises servers.  Cloud services are designed to provide easy, scalable access to applications, resources, and services, and are fully managed by a cloud service provider.

A cloud service can dynamically scale to meet the needs of its users, and because the service provider supplies the hardware and software necessary for the service, there is no need for a company to provide or deploy its own resources or allocate IT staff to manage the service.

WHAT IS THE BEST APPROACH FOR CLOUD SERVICES?

Cloud Computing Services provide Information Technology (IT) as a service over the Internet or dedicated network, with delivery on demand, and payment based on usage.  Cloud computing services range from full applications and deployment platforms to servers, storage, and virtual desktops.

WHAT ARE THE MOST COMMON CLOUD COMPUTING SERVICES?

The most common and widely adopted cloud computing services are Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (Paas), and Software as a Service (Saas).

WHAT ARE THREE TYPES OF CLOUD DEPLOYMENTS?

There are three types of cloud deployments categorized based on an organization’s ability to manage and secure assets as well as business needs.  These are the public cloud, private cloud, and hybrid cloud.

The Public Cloud, in general, is SaaS services offered to users over the Internet.  It is the most economical option for users in which the service provider bears the expenses of bandwidth and infrastructure.  It has limited configurations, and the cost is determined by usage capacity.  Limitations of the public cloud are its lack of SLA specifications.  Despite high reliability, lower costs, zero maintenance, and on-demand scalability, the public cloud is not suitable for organizations operating with sensitive information as they have to comply with stringent security regulations.

The Private Cloud is used by large organizations to build and manage their own data centers for specific business and IT needs and operations.  The private cloud provides more control over customizability, scalability, and flexibility while improving the security of assets and business operations.  This sort of infrastructure can be built on the premises or outsourced to a third-party service provider.  Either way, it has the ability to maintain the hardware and software environment over a private network solely for the owner.  Large and medium scale financial enterprises and government agencies typically opt for private clouds.

The Hybrid Cloud is the combination of a private and public cloud, providing for more flexibility to businesses while having control over critical operations and assets, coupled with improved flexibility and cost-efficiency.  The hybrid cloud architecture enables companies to take advantage of the public cloud as and when necessary due to their easy workload migration.  For instance, businesses can use the public cloud for running high-volume applications like emails and utilize private clouds for sensitive assets like financials, data recovery, and during scheduled maintenance and rise in demand.

WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS OF CLOUD COMPUTING?

Cloud computing offers plenty of benefits.  The top ten are as follows:

  1.  Instant Scalability – Cloud computing enables immediate scalability of infrastructure capacity depending on the business need.  It is like having an unlimited IT resource, which can be scaled up and or down to meet user’s demands.
  2.  Anywhere accessibility – A lot of factors have enabled globalization, and a key one is a technology and high-speed internet connectivity.  Cloud empowers enterprises to deploy their applications across the globe so they can service their customers at a fraction of the cost of traditional brick-and-motor businesses.  Due to lower latency, customers around the world get an identical digital experience while using the applications.
  3.  Increased speed and operational agility –  Today to cope with competition, businesses must have the ability to instantly scale their cloud capacity by accessing bandwidth demands from remote servers of a particular cloud service provider.  If the business demand is more, the enterprise can turn up its computing capacity and IT resources availability with a click of a button.  Such an ability improves organizational agility, productivity, and efficiency making scope to experiment with new ideas and thereby, offering competitive advantage and the ability for the organization of any size to disrupt the market.
  4.  Reduced expenditure – With the cloud, companies can focus on building their business rather than investing in hardware infrastructure and data centers that either remain idle, or underutilized.  Cloud costs, however, depend on the consumption which can be a variable expense.
  5.  Automatic updates and patches – When businesses deal with several different kinds of software, operating systems, and applications from various vendors for their everyday operations, they have to have software and security updates rolled out from time to time.  This is a very time-consuming process and the downtime for system maintenance means loss of productivity.  A cloud service provider or a managed service provider can take care of these automatically, saving time and manual effort on maintenance.
  6.  Disaster recovery – As the world is going digital, making robust backup and disaster recovery is crucial for businesses of all sizes.  However, on-premises investments for disaster recovery are things of the past today.  Especially, since cloud computing helps both the small and large businesses save time and effort involved in this exercise.
  7.  High security – Protecting sensitive, personally identifiable and/or financial information is a considerable challenge for CIO’s.  Advanced cloud security features, however, have reduced the risks of information loss and cyber stealth.
  8.  Reduced carbon footprint – Cloud infrastructure significantly reduces power, IT infrastructure, and resource consumption by offering resources as per demand, thereby reducing e-waste and adverse impact on the environment.
  9.  Flexibility – Bringing your internet-enabled devices to work, irrespective of the device type and/or global location, the cloud offers vast flexibility and empowerment to businesses, as well as to their employees.
  10.  Enterprise collaboration – Company information no longer exists in isolation.  Centralized documentation control on cloud-based, file-sharing, and social communication apps (like Slack, Yammer, etc.) offer transparency and visibility into work processes, streamlining information flow and enabling better collaboration between teams, departments, and employees seated in different time zones.  This in turn leads to improved productivity and bottom line.

If you like to learn more about which Cloud Services are right for your business or just need help with Cloud support, visit the TeamLogicIT Plano website or give us a call at (469) 573-3743.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS ABOUT CLOUD SERVICES

WHAT ARE CLOUD SERVICES DESIGNED TO PROVIDE?

Cloud services are designed to provide easy, affordable access to applications and resources, without the need for internal infrastructure or hardware.

HOW DO BUSINESSES USE THE CLOUD?

Businesses use cloud computing to access information anywhere with any    compatible device.  Cloud-computing services can range from data storage to functional programs, including accounting, customer service tools and remote desktop hosting.

IS CLOUD COMPUTING GOOD FOR SMALL BUSINESS?

For small and midsize businesses (SMBs), the benefits of cloud computing are endless. Cloud computing saves businesses time and money by boosting productivity, improving collaboration and promoting innovation.  Businesses use cloud computing to access information anywhere with any compatible device.

WHAT ARE THE REASONS NOT TO MOVE YOUR BUSINESS TO THE CLOUD?

Less control over your data’s security, a good Internet is required, locked into a Subscription Model, if it’s not broke don’t fix it, extra vendors to deal with, cloud-based services are targets for hackers, and long-term costs are higher for cloud computing.

WHY DO I NEED THE CLOUD?

Get more space for less money. A fee for unlimited storage in the cloud is cheaper than buying and maintaining lots of hard drive storage space.