The Cloud Environment – Benefits, Risks and the Future

There is no doubt that the introduction of cloud technology has completely transformed the business environment on a global scale, across all sectors and industries. 

Some of the clear benefits I have learned about a cloud environment include greater speed to market; cost savings when it comes to capital and operational expenditure, and greater ability to meet evolving customer and market demands. This has the potential to be hugely empowering, for example by extending an individual’s reach far beyond what would historically have been possible.

Cloud computing has its roots in a trend that actually started right at the beginning of the world wide web, focused on the commercial hosting of servers and storage in professionally run data centres. As the internet grew and increasingly large-scale consumer web services appeared, service providers like Google discovered they could make extra money by “renting” out capacity that they weren’t using. In addition, they could create a more powerful and innovative environment of applications than any one company could produce on its own.

Cloud computing has introduced so many advantages to the workplace that it’s difficult to imagine operating an efficient business without them! One simple example to describe how cloud technology has created greater reassurance of compliancy is the fact that all relevant personnel within an organisation will be viewing the same, up-to-date document, rather than various versions they have on their own hard drive or network. An efficient Document Storage Management solution ensures all staff from varying sites are working from the same set of policies and procedures. Every version can be saved so previous crucial changes can be viewed when required, and the platform also notifies the relevant users when document reviews are required. The risk of systems crashing and losing critical documentation is reduced greatly because documents are automatically backed up and stored offsite.

The obvious benefit I see that comes with cloud technology is the enormous cost savings to a business. Firstly you save on substantial capital costs, because you won’t need in-house server storage and application requirements. Then, the lack of on-premises infrastructure also removes their associated operational costs in the form of power, staff and administration costs. You also don’t need to budget for infrastructure maintenance and updates either – this is something cloud providers do on your behalf. Businesses effectively pay for what they use and have the option to disengage whenever they like - there is no invested IT capital to worry about.

Most providers offer a Service Level Agreement which guarantees different levels of availability. When something does go wrong, they have a great deal more resources and solutions than you would to fix the problem immediately.

Overall, because your business’ IT requirements are managed externally, your business can focus on customer service, growth and other business practices to maintain your innovative edge over your competition, and on profit.

Despite the great many advantages that cloud technology offers, many businesses are understandably wary of the additional risks to security that may arise from a cloud environment. Obviously the safety and privacy controls that apply to your data housed in your own data centre differ to those of a cloud provider. If your cloud is external, you need to determine how they’re going to protect it your data, how they’re going to back it up and how you may reserve the right to audit the security and compliance framework that they build around your data. Depending on how critical your data is, you may also want to use encryption.

It may turn out that some data may be too sensitive to put to the cloud, and that’s a decision for individual business to make. Remember that it is your business, and not the cloud provider, who is accountable to your customers for the privacy of their data.

Cloud computing has progressed so far, so quickly. What does the future hold?

In my observations it seems that firstly, it is becoming more obvious that IT and cloud vendors are required to be more than just vendors who sell a business a product, and then perhaps offer an upgrade every so often. They are actually cloud business relationship managers – not only are they tailoring a digital solution for each individual business and their specific requirements, they also then manage cloud-based applications on behalf of the user. 

Another trend I have noticed for cloud computing seems to be heading towards hybrid environments. This describes a scenario where some data will be stored in the cloud, whilst more sensitive data will remain in-house. Cloud business relationship managers will help clients decide which data will go to the cloud and which will stay in-house.

Jeremy Townsend