Uncharted Territory for Many Businesses
By running your IT services over the internet, you can minimize both the costs and complexity associated with these services. Still, many businesses are reluctant to make the transition to the Cloud. They may have the impression that cloud computing is complicated. Or traditional thinking within the organization or concerns about compliance issues cause them to hesitate. And some businesses are actually ready to make the transition, but they have stalled in the search for an alternative to the giant global cloud providers like Google and AWS or need a solution that combines both onsite and cloud storage, and they aren’t sure how to approach it. Fortunately, with the right guidance, there is no reason not to jump on the Cloud bandwagon.
There isn’t just one cloud
So what is “the cloud”? In simple terms, it is a way of sharing resources where businesses can rent access to storage and computing capacity in centralized data centers. This means they don’t have to maintain their own data infrastructure – no more worrying about data storage space, server room hassles and exorbitant cooling bills.
"The cloud" as a concept is a bit misleading, because there can be many approaches to cloud computing. You will often see three categories of clouds: public, private and hybrid.
The difference between Public, Private and Hybrid Cloud:
- A public cloud is the classic cloud service model. This is where users can access the computing power of the internet from a range of cloud services providers, such as Google and IBM. A simple example that most people will recognize is saving your files to Microsoft OneDrive or DropBox. These cloud services save data from many different users in the same data centers.
- A private cloud is a dedicated cloud service that only one business or organization has access to. It can be located onsite, if the business runs its own data center, or it can be hosted by a cloud services provider. Either way, the infrastructure is private and nobody else has access to it.
- A hybrid cloud solution is just as it sounds – a combination of two or more clouds. They can be either private or public, and while they function as separate entities, they are linked and data can move freely between them.
Cloud computing is …
- Cost effective: It requires no expensive investments in hardware and software.
- Scalable: It’s easy to scale up or down as your data storage and computing capacity needs change.
- Agile: You can access cloud resources on demand, giving you the flexibility to handle peak periods without loss of data speed and efficiency.
- Streamlined: With a cloud-based IT infrastructure, your IT department can focus on business-critical processes and leave the practicalities of running a data center to the cloud service professionals.
- Secure: Cloud service providers offer a range of technologies and processes to keep your data safe. And because the processes are centralized and not managed by a single person or department, you can avoid single-point-of-failure issues.
- State-of-the-art: Secure data centers are regularly updated with the latest hardware versions and software patches, so you don’t have to worry about keeping your system updated.
Store your backup in the cloud
Storing your backup in the cloud is the obvious choice. It’s easy to maintain an offsite copy of your data and to comply with backup redundancy requirements. And if you already store parts of your data in the cloud, you’re better off with a cloud backup, because you won’t be placing all of your eggs in one basket. A reliable Backup-as-a-Service provider can give you all the benefits of having your own data center but at a fraction of the cost.
