An in-depth look at the types of cloud as a service and how to utilize the cloud for business continuity.
By Brace Rennels
If you listen to the IBM advertisements on television “The Cloud” is described as a “workload optimized service management platform” but what does that mean? Basically, in the most simplistic form, the Cloud is a virtual data center. That is it! People often ask me to explain what it is, how it is used and why is it so popular? Usually, to avoid the deer in the headlights look by trying to explain what an optimized workload is, I will usually explain that it is a virtual data center. However, there are unique characteristics that allow it to be referred to as the Cloud. First, it is usually fully virtualized and accessed via the internet (or cloud), whether it is a virtual private or public network. The technical concept actually isn’t new. Companies have been implementing their own virtual private data centers for years. However, now companies are looking to adopt cloud computing as a service to help reduce costs as well as time to implement new infrastructure, service platform or software application. One of the fastest growing areas of cloud services is utilizing it for disaster recovery and or improving recovery time objectives for storage backup processes.
Most, if not all, Fortune 500 companies have had the Cloud for years. Basically, they have created their own virtual data center for disaster recovery or for centralized server management. These are considered virtual private data centers versus what the Cloud is typically referred as a virtual public data center, like Amazon, where services, platforms or infrastructure is accessed via the Internet. Google has been the “Software as a Service” (SaaS) model for years and is a way to access legal briefings and decisions for research. Lexis-Nexis® is probably the most notable provider of these types of services, they provide thousands of law firms worldwide with of content-enabled workflow solutions specifically tailored to professionals in the legal industry. Therefore, it essentially becomes a commodity type of service that you lease for as long as you need that information or service.
Another benefit of the Cloud is its ability to be utilized as a disaster recovery facility to enhance backup and recovery requirements. For smaller businesses the cost to create a data center is usually too expensive, therefore many companies don’t have the business continuity they would like. With the introduction of Cloud, it became more cost effective for SMB’s to lease infrastructure for disaster recovery rather than gathering funds required to make a purchase all at once. Another benefit in leasing infrastructure is that the company doesn’t need to acquire resources or staff to manage the additional datacenter. Also, a company only needs to pay for what it uses. The Pay-as-you-go model may have one of the largest advantages of utilizing cloud services. So, rather than purchasing all the equipment needed for a data center with three years of storage, the Cloud leases what you need and expands dynamically if more storage, processing or memory is required.
Only paying for the storage you need is what makes cloud providers like the Amazon EC2 an attractive backup and recovery option. Cloud computing can now provide a more readily available copy of data that can be recovered anytime and anywhere. It can also greatly reduce the recovery time objectives of using a tape archive solution. Company’s today are using cloud computing to enhance their existing backup solutions to reduce the amount of money spent on the tape, storage services and shipping but also reduce the amount of time it would take to recover. Tape has been around for a long time so I don’t see cloud computing replacing tape backup anytime soon. However, it will definitely be used to improve business critical servers that need a lower recovery time. Tape can still be used as an offsite archive solution to meet industry compliance regulations, such as when documents and data need to be available for upwards of 7 years before they can be destroyed.
So, what have we learned about the Cloud? It is a virtual data center that can dynamically add resources as needed in a Pay-as-you-go leasing model. But the real difference is how a data center is built, managed and utilized by companies. Cloud computing provides infrastructure, software and platforms as a purchasable service that would not be an option for most companies The cloud provides opportunities for companies to rapidly spin up data center resources without the need for knowledge experts, software administrators and hardware startup costs. The three functions that cloud computing can provide is serve as a disaster recovery facility, a platform and infrastructure for enhanced backup procedures as well as the ability to lease software as needed versus trying to disrupt the company organization to implement yourself. This is only the tip of the iceberg regarding cloud computing, over the next few years this industry will rapidly grow. In fact, it forecasted by many analysts as being a 25 billion dollar business opportunity.
The Different Types of Cloud as a Service
The next step in understanding the cloud is to comprehend the different types of services offered and how to use them.
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