An IT Manager’s Guide to Cloud Computing

As businesses become even more focused on efficiency, value and making IT a part of every business process, the cloud provides the solutions to these and other issues.

This comprehensive guide explores the following chapters:

1. Cloud computing defined
2. How does cloud computing operate?
3. The four cloud deployment models
4. The three cloud computing service delivery models
5. Why cloud computing is important for businesses
6. The key characteristics of cloud computing
7. The disadvantages of the cloud
8. What are the security risks of cloud computing?
9. Why IT pros need cloud management
10. Final thoughts

According to Palo Alto Networks, some 70% of businesses operate in the cloud, with 25% growth in adoption over the past year. In every market and vertical, from banking to manufacturing, retail to supply chain and business services, the cloud is fast becoming the de facto way to do business.

Cloud applications are fast replacing their legacy equivalents, from ERP, productivity and collaboration to finance and industrial applications. Businesses can rapidly adopt and deploy cloud services, making them ideal for startups and a digital poster-child for high-growth firms and modern enterprises.

But before every cloud buying decision, companies need to be aware of the safest route to deployment, ensuring business security, privacy and compliance, while ensuring that the cloud services they adopt can grow with the business and deliver maximum value.   

Cloud computing defined

Cloud computing is the business use of IT resources by your organization in an on-demand style. The cloud lives on providers’ massive data centers and is delivered and often managed over the internet with a pay-per-user or on-the-go pricing method, helping companies reduce costs and enabling scalable adoption of those services.

Cloud reduces the need for physical data centers or local servers, providing applications for employees, along with services like compute power, storage and databases. This is all delivered by a single provider or with users picking the best-suited applications from various providers for their needs.

These applications can be accessed on work laptops, tablets or smartphones, driving hybrid or remote working patterns that help make businesses more flexible and efficient.

How does cloud computing operate?

The cloud is far from being one amorphous digital creation. Every provider has their own data centers (or leases others) that end-user businesses access. Each cloud application has an account for every business, with some or many users accounts linked to it.

For hybrid or private clouds, enterprises might still use their own data centers for security or high-availability reasons, but for most users, they log-in via a web browser or mobile app to access the cloud applications and data, wherever they’re maintained.

Multiple users can access, update and share files, while administrators can assign or revoke access, upgrade accounts as needed and monitor usage to ensure the business gets value from each cloud service, expanding or adding additional services as required.

The four cloud deployment models

The cloud comes in several flavors to support the needs of business operations, comply with regulatory and security requirements and provide the maximum flexibility. There are benefits for each type of deployment, with the main advantages focused on cost, risk and business need.

A study conducted by Insights for Professionals identified that nearly two-thirds (64%) of CIOs operate a hybrid cloud model.

Public cloud

Public cloud is the workspace for most startups and SMBs who lack the need or funding for expensive computing infrastructure. But these companies grow fast, and many massive success stories still operate on the public cloud, often driven by Amazon AWS, Google or Microsoft services. They leverage the scalability of infinite public cloud resources to continue to grow as the workforce and customer base all scale up.

Private cloud

Private clouds are dedicated resources to your specific business. They're more suited for larger and established companies, those working in regulated markets, and governments. While security is a concern for most organizations, one of the advantages of this deployment model is that it gives IT departments greater visibility and control over their security.

Hybrid cloud

Straddling both cloud types, a hybrid model provides their combined advantages, allowing a business to maintain some services in a more secure fashion. As growth occurs, some services can migrate to public clouds, while firms can also use “cloud bursting” to support applications that can see dramatic growth or irregular usage to deliver additional capacity.

Multi-cloud

When comparing cloud service providers, some companies find a multi-cloud approach, adopting more than one provider has benefits. Consider it the same approach as airlines that fly both Boeing and Airbus aircraft. The key benefit of adopting a multi-cloud strategy is that it avoids lock-in with one specific vendor, provides the exact services the business requires and increases choice and flexibility for growth. However, with multiple providers comes the risk of cloud sprawl and a broader security border to protect.

The three cloud computing service delivery models

Having established the various types of deployment models, there is also the method of cloud service models to consider. Most businesses are familiar with the Software as a Service (SaaS) model, but to support businesses, IaaS and PaaS are also considerations.

SaaS

Software as a Service is the most popular cloud service delivery model. It places most of the onus on the provider to manage and maintain the platform and applications in the cloud. If they go down for any technical or malevolent reason, so do your operations for the duration of the problem. However, SaaS offers huge cost benefits, is typically 99.9% reliable and, as long as your business is comfortable working with their apps, with limited customization and rules, users find SaaS meets most of their needs.

IaaS

Infrastructure as a Service is for businesses with greater fidelity demands, providing a virtual data center, without the cost of a physical build. Most providers offer highly customizable and expandable IaaS services, allowing the business to deploy its own apps and services with more granular control, but requires the IT knowledge to manage and secure those services.