Changes bring gamut of offerings, both risks and benefits. Cloud
Based Offerings is no different. It has brought numerous advantages
where demand to upscale infrastructure is hitting the backbone of
Businesses.
Some of the benefits of Cloud that I can count on my fingers are:
- Cost i.e. days are numbered where organizations
invest huge in maintaining data centres. The focus is shifting to pay –
as – go business model. Use the service and increase the business value
without the total ownership of the costs and risks.
- Scalability i.e. infrastructure offered is
scalable as per the cloud offering by the service provider. No longer
has the higher management needed to purchase hardware components,
negotiate bandwidth usage and other complexities.
- Provisioning [DE-provisioing] i.e. which lets the service provider to manage the Cloud assets based on consumer demands. The resources could be added, deleted or enhanced as per the load. Ex: IBM CloudBurst 2.0 which is used to manage IBM WebSphere deployments with click of a button!
- Automation i.e. software licensing and periodic
updates are the things of the past. The regular security patches to
firmware, and software alike, the service provider takes care of this.
- Information mobility i.e. get the information as
and when you require, wherever you require and on which medium you
require. Cloud offerings are Internet based so you can avail and manage
your business on fly.
Yes, benefits looks quite intriguing but it comes at a RISK. According to Ernst and Young, risks to Cloud are:
- Data Leakage
- Lose Data Control
- Security
These could be potential concerns for any management but there is
always a light of hope which is marked by sound analysis and secure
implementation of the Cloud offerings. The business is the custodian of
the data through Secure Access and Categorization of Data which needs to
be understood.
Below is IBM Perspective on Cloud [by Doug Clark] and how it’s been leveraged:
Fig: Cloud Adoption – IBM
Well there are many un-answered questions like cloud offering
compatibility, data portability, network latency, security of data, how
access is controlled etc. etc.
At last, I can say ‘With Power comes the Responsibility’. Cloud is
offering us a Power, a power to make substantial growth and with sound
understanding, if we select the right offering, the success is
inevitable.
