Why Cloud Computing adoption should be your top IT priority in 2016

Cloud computing as an IT trend has gained enormous interest in research and practice. It has been defined differently by various organizations. National institute of standards and Technology (NIST) defines cloud computing as “a model for enabling convenient, on- demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g. networks, servers, storage, applications and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or cloud provider interaction.” Forrester (2008) defines cloud computing as “A standardized IT capability (services, software, or infrastructure) delivered via Internet technologies in a pay-per-use, self-service way”. Others have defined cloud computing as follows:-

Enterprise Strategy Group: “Nothing more than a service model where business workloads are deployed, transparently executed internally or somewhere on the internet, and businesses only pay for what they consume.”

Gartner: “Cloud computing is a style of computing in which scalable and elastic IT-enabled capabilities are delivered as a service using internet technologies.”

International Data Corporation (IDC): “Cloud computing is an emerging IT development, deployment and delivery model, enabling real time delivery of products, services and solutions over the internet”.

Characteristics of cloud computing

Dallas Chapter of Institute of Internal Auditors (2012) identified the following characteristics of cloud computing:-

1. On-demand self-service:- unilateral provisioning of computing capabilities (i.e. server time and network storage) is performed automatically, without human interaction with a service provider.
2. Broad network access: - Capabilities are available over the network via thin or thick client platforms, such as mobile phones, tablets, laptops, and workstations.
3. Resource pooling- Multiple consumers are served using a multi-tenant model, with different physical and virtual resources dynamically assigned and reassigned according to consumer demand.
4. Rapid elasticity: - The provider can elastically (sometimes automatically) provision and release resources commensurate with demand. To the consumer, the capabilities often appear to be unlimited and can be appropriated in any quantity at any time.
5. Measured service: - Resource usage can be monitored, controlled, and reported, providing transparency for both the provider and consumer of the utilized service (Grance & Mell, 2011).

Cloud services Delivery Models

There are three major cloud service models, normally summarized as SPI (Software as a Service, Platform as a Service and Infrastructure as a Service).

• Software as a Service (SaaS), which entails access to a provider’s software applications running on a cloud infrastructure. It’s a software distribution model in which applications are hosted by a vendor or service provider and made available to customers over a network, typically the Internet.
• Platform as a Service (Paas), which entails provision to users of the capability to deploy onto the cloud infrastructure applications created by the user with provider-supported programming languages and tools. PaaS is a paradigm for delivering operating systems and associated services over the internet without downloads or installation.
• Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS): Service provision model which entails provisioning of fundamental computer resources (e.g., processing, storage, networks).

So why should cloud computing be your top priority in 2016?

1. Cloud computing will offer you a burst of scalability:

As I stated earlier, organizations today receive a variety of data in huge volumes and at different velocities. Initially, an organization’s data was solely generated by human, this has changed and now data is generated by machines, networks as well as human interaction on the systems, for example the social media. This means that the organizations have enormous amount of data to process and use in decision making. The data comes in various formats; both structured and unstructured. The data not only comes in text format, but also as images, audio, audio-visual formats among others.  

The data that organizations process or consume will flow at different speeds; some massive and continuous. Some data need to be real-time while others are periodic. 

The variety of data coming in enormous volumes at varying velocities creates challenges in storage, mining and analyzing data. A highly scalable computing environment that grows with your data, and that is dynamically provisioned according to your processing needs is therefore necessary. In most cloud computing environments, the computing resources are auto-scaled to meet your computing needs. Your business can scale up or scale down your operation and storage needs quickly to suit your situation, allowing flexibility as your needs change.

2. Backup and disaster recovery

Due to the rapidly increasing amount of data, most organizations face the challenge or replicating the production environments to a disaster recovery site, because it technically involves building another data center. If you host your data in the cloud, backing up and restoring to the same cloud platform is relatively easier than to a physical device. Additionally, most cloud service providers have the capacity to perform backup and recovery, thus making it simpler and cost effective than on-premise deployments.

3. Cost savings

Organizations, regardless of type or size strive to keep capital and operation expenses to a minimum. With cloud computing, you can save substantial capital costs with zero in-house server storage and application requirements, thus transitioning capital expenses (CAPEX) to operating expenses (OPEX). The lack of on-premises infrastructure also eliminates their associated operational costs in the form of power, air conditioning and administration costs. This is perhaps why Buyya refers to cloud computing as the “fifth utility”.

4. Reliability and consistency

When an organization moves it’s applications to the cloud, it stands to gain from reliable and consistent services than hosting them on-premise. Most cloud service providers offer a Service Level Agreement which guarantees 99.99% availability. This is because most of the providers have invested in redundancy as well as reliable failover technologies.

5. Manageability

Cloud computing provides enhanced and simplified IT management and maintenance capabilities through central administration of resources, vendor managed infrastructure and SLA backed agreements. The cloud service provider performs infrastructure updates and maintenance. You enjoy a simple web-based user interface for accessing software, applications and services without the need for installation and an SLA ensures the timely and guaranteed delivery, management and maintenance of your IT services.

6. Cloud Services offer a Strategic Advantage

Auto-scaled computing resources give you a competitive advantage over competitors, since the organization channels the resources their main business objectives. Your company can deploy mission critical applications that deliver significant business benefits, without any upfront costs and minimal provisioning time. Cloud computing allows you to forget about technology and focus on your key business activities and objectives. It can also help you to reduce the time needed to market newer applications and services.

7. Quick Deployment

Lastly and most importantly, cloud computing gives you the advantage of quick deployment. Once you opt for this method of functioning, your entire system can be fully functional in a matter of a few minutes. Cloud hosting allows business to retain the same applications and business processes without having to deal with the backend technicalities. Readily manageable by the Internet, a cloud infrastructure can be accessed by enterprises easily and quickly.

8. Improved mobility and Increased collaboration
Cloud computing allows your employees to access, edit, and share documents anytime and anywhere. Cloud-based workflow and file sharing apps help them make updates in real time and gives them full visibility of their collaborations. Additionally, data and applications are available to employees on different devices, including mobile devices. Most organizations are increasingly providing flexible working hours and locations to increase employee productivity. Also, trends such as Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) is supported by cloud computing.
9. Environmentally Friendly

Cloud computing greatly reduces the amount of carbon released to the environment. A study by Accenture established that a cloud solution for a large deployment can reduce carbon emissions by more than 30%, while for small deployments it can be reduced by 90%. Additionally, the cloud architecture allows providers to simultaneously serve multiple companies on the same server infrastructure. Disparate demand patterns from different companies flatten overall demand peaks and make fluctuations more predictable. Because the infrastructure is shared among many consumers, the overall energy consumption is reduced as compared to each consumer having its own infrastructure.

Despite the many benefits offered by cloud computing, there are various challenges that slow down its adoption among many organizations. As noted by Cloud Security Alliance (CSA), 73% of organizations are reluctant to move their key applications due to security concerns on the cloud. Regulatory compliance is another concern, with 38% of organizations having this challenge. Loss of control of data on cloud is another challenge to 38% of the companies surveyed, and knowledge gap among IT and business managers with 34% of the organizations facing this challenge. Organizations who care for the environment should therefore adopt cloud computing to reduce the environmental degradation through carbon emission.

From my own experience, cloud applications require very stable and reliable internet connections which may be lacking in many current as well as potential cloud client organizations. By definition, cloud computing involves delivering IT services over the internet; therefore, without a reliable internet connectivity these benefits may not be realized. Finally, many organizations move their key applications to cloud environment without reviewing their IT governance to cover cloud computing governance. I will explore cloud governance challenges in my next article.