You may have heard the the term Cloud Computing in blogs and articles and still not understand what it actually is or the pros and cons of initiating this technology into your business model.
The term Cloud is a metaphor for the internet and Cloud Computing refers to business information management provided as a pay for service to users over the internet.
It is a general concept that incorporates software as a service, Web 2.0 and other recent technology trends, with the common theme of reliance on the Internet for satisfying product access, product distribution and licensed usage etc. Business applications and data are stored on a hosting providers server.
Cloud computing is touching a large number of products and companies. Many new computing products have debuted in recent weeks that rely on cloud computing for their entire infrastructure and computing resources. Some startups aren’t spending a lot of their limited capital on server farms or IT infrastructure. Instead, they are using platforms such as Amazon’s EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) and Salesforce.com’s Force.com to run and deliver their applications to customers. They're on the cutting edge in many ways, and more established companies have yet to follow. The ability to build a Web presence and deliver resources to customers using a cloud computing platform is becoming extremely attractive and cost effective.
Because Cloud Computing Customers are renting their computing power, they avoid large capital expenditures and only pay for the disk space and bandwidth they use. They have flexibility to expand and contract to marketplace demand and introduce new products quickly & cost effectively.
But as with any technology there are risks and you should be prepared for the inevitable realities. Corporations or end-users wishing to avoid losing or not being able to access their data should research vendor's policies on data security before using vendor services.
Check the following with your cloud-computing vendor:
- Privileged user access—Who has specialized access to your data and what are the hiring and management practices of such administrators?
- Regulatory compliance—Is your vendor willing to undergo external audits and/or provide security certifications?
- Data location—Does your provider allow for any control over the location of your data to a dedicated server assigned specifically to your account?
- Data segregation—Is encryption available at all stages and are these encryption schemes designed and tested by experienced professionals?
- Recovery—What will happen to data in the case of a disaster; do they offer complete restoration and, if so, how long that would take?
- Investigative Support—Does vendor have the ability to investigate any inappropriate or illegal activity?
- Long-term viability—What will happen to your data if the company goes out of business?
In practice, create your own contingency plan. Maintain full secure backups on and off-site. Keep up to date with financial stability of your cloud-computing vendor.
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