Cloud Computing - Infrastructure as a Service
I think it’s fair to say that “Cloud” has become a pretty common term, with every person and organisation on the planet trying to digitally transform. The core of the transformation often starts with deep conversation around cloud computing and the impact on individuals and businesses.
The fundamentals are easy to grasp – we have typically worked in a very physical world having all our data and programs sit on our computer hard drive. The change is that we have progressed to a state where that data and programs can be stored and accessed over the internet.
The immediate thought is that many organisations have invested significantly into their physical on premises infrastructure – was it a waste and how do we transition into the cloud?
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
IaaS becomes the core component of a business cloud solution and as you can imagine, there are only a few organisations that could deliver the infrastructure needed. Household names include, Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform and Rackspace Open Cloud to name a few. A provider would need to ensure the basics are in place, routine maintenance, routine backups and an effective resiliency plan will offer a scalable solution that can be tweaked as the needs of a business change.
I would be remiss if I didn’t also mention the power behind automating some of the admin that IT teams face – the cloud allows for scaling and virtualisation and even policy based services. There are some real advantages here, for instance testing a new application could be more cost effective if it’s done through a IaaS provider like Microsoft Azure. Once the application passes the testing you could then bring it on premises – saving you time and resources.
It’s important to note that there is a distinction between cloud for the end user and cloud for enterprise and as such the playground is vastly different. While Amazon dominates the space, and has for a while it is still not the solution of choice if you need highly compliant secure applications or if the applications are very complex like in the enterprise environment, here you need a more custom solution and one that can understand your needs and requirements. The only other leader in infrastructure then is Microsoft Azure with more than double the cloud power (IaaS computing capacity) than all other providers AWS excluded.
The Risks:
A decent amount of discussion is currently under way tackling privacy and security in the cloud which seems to be the most contentious of debates. Following close behind is the issues around downtime and lack of cloud skill. I tend to believe that we need to start focusing more on vulnerabilities that arise from the exploits of hackers. Within the enterprise space I would imagine, control and flexibility and even the dependency on services providers becomes a risk.
I think it’s fair to say that is a brave new world and organisations globally are on this journey to the cloud.
The question is – are you on the spaceship?
Microsoft Azure is a cloud computing platform and infrastructure created
by Microsoft for building, deploying, and managing applications and services
through a global network of Microsoft-managed data centers to the Enterprise,
Government and SME (Small and Medium Enterprise) sectors. If you are new to
the cloud and not sure how or where to get started,
start here: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/support/options/.
Eugene Chetty
Microsoft SA