MBA / FEATURE
What is the Cloud all about? The Montgomery Bar Association has asked TechWise Group to cover cloud technologies over the next few months in this newsletter. This initial article is a basic introduction to the cloud. The purpose is to help readers form a conceptual model of how the cloud works. In future articles, we will cover specific cloud technologies, how to prepare your organization for a move to the cloud and a discussion on cloud security.
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uppose you have a huge vinyl collection and love music. The only problem is that you can’t listen to it at work because it’s silly to bring your collection back and forth from work to home. Luckily you have a friend who’s a radio DJ. You give him all your vinyl and he plays your music on a special radio station just for you. Now you can listen to your music at home, at work, in your car, anywhere. You don’t even have to worry about scratching or losing your records. This is working pretty well, so you give your friend your DVD collection. He also happens to work at a TV station and sets up a special channel just for you. So now you can watch all your movies from anywhere you want just as well. Your friend is like the cloud. Instead of having your stuff at your house, he stores and broadcasts it to you, wherever you are. If your house burns down, no problem, your stuff is safe. Let me relate this back to a business environment. You have a collection of documents stored locally on your computer. You want to go on vacation and still have access to these files. The cloud is just like your radio friend. You put all these files in the cloud, and now you have remote access from anywhere in the world with an internet connection. Now that you have these documents stored, you can start to incorporate work email, calendars, project files, even your legal software.
You have your cloud with all your information, but now you would like to have your work colleague access these files as well. You just let them know the ‘radio station’ that your files are on, your cloud location. Now you have the ability to have real-time updates of shared information. Now that you have an idea of what the cloud is and how it works, there are three main models regarding how the cloud operates – the public cloud, the private cloud and the semi-private cloud. The public cloud passes the responsibility and associated risk for an IT infrastructure from the business to a third-party in a public cloud-sourcing model. Some of the cloud services that are publicly available are Microsoft’s Office 365, Google’s Gmail, Dropbox file storage, or Amazon Web Services (AWS). The private cloud infrastructure is provided virtually via the Internet, but from designated facilities, whether owned by the client or the vendor. The semi-private cloud service is a hybrid of the first two. The current shift to cloud computing presents enormous opportunities for businesses. Companies are moving away from continued investment in their own infrastructure to sourcing and developing IT services externally. There are many ways that cloud computing makes businesses more agile and flexible. The real power of cloud computing is that it is a flexible, pay-as-you-use
SIDEBAR
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SUMMER 2013
• Organizations can manage their investment risk by rapidly implementing and trialing new solutions before making long-term commitments. • The flexibility offered by cloud computing enables businesses to increase or decrease their IT infrastructure costs as their business needs change. • It’s easier to buy in extra services and capacity to reach new customers and expand your market footprint quickly. • New technology can be implemented faster, arming your people with the best tools and increasing their productivity.
business model. It allows companies to manage their technology costs more efficiently, enables deployment of new technology faster and easier than other models, and allows management to focus on delivering business value – that can only be good for business.