Are you taking the right approach to cloud?

BANGALORE, INDIA: Today’s SMB operates in a highly competitive and increasingly technology driven market. Operational efficiency is naturally a high priority for small and medium businesses to stay ahead and emerging technologies like cloud and virtualization have a crucial role in determining the same.

Cloud computing in particular, offers many advantages in terms of flexibility, agility and on-demand resources that can give organizations a real competitive edge. Cloud as a cost effective technology also fits in comfortably within the strained IT budgets of the SMBs.

Also Read: Cloud computing to be teenaged in 2012

The interest levels around cloud adoption are rising, amongst SMBs.  Factors such as increased agility and fewer burdens on IT teams are making this a profitable option. The first step towards cloud adoption is server virtualization and SMBs are increasingly considering the adoption of this technology.

The Symantec 2011 Small Business Virtualization Poll revealed that about 72 per cent of SMBs, across the Asia Pacific and Japan regions are considering deploying server virtualization.

Cloud computing allows SMBs to dynamically scale their computing capability without having to invest in costly infrastructure. According to IDC predictions - by 2012, customer spending on IT cloud services will grow almost threefold, to $42 billion and account for nine per cent of revenues in five key market segments (business applications, application development/deployment, system infrastructure software, storage and Servers).

However, are the SMBs ready for cloud adoption? How do they acquire the requisite information about cloud adoption and its safe, convenient usage?

It is important that SMBs gain a better understanding of the cloud computing options available to them and accordingly decide their approach towards successful adoption. SMBs need to recognize that they will be going through significant changes to the way they do business, and need to be sure to conduct a thorough evaluation before they make the transition.

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Public Cloud 

In this model the vendor provides all the hardware, software, support and security  for the IT infrastructure, which means an organization pays only for the services it uses, thus saving a significant amount of money by replacing capital expenditure with operational expenditure.

SMBs will also be able to access additional resources on-demand in response to increased application loads.

Private Cloud

As an alternative SMEs can also seek a private cloud infrastructure that is resilient and more appropriate for critical workloads. Private clouds are designed to be visible only to the organization that creates them.

Private clouds offer many of the benefits of public clouds while allowing an organization to maintain ownership of its data and equipment. The benefits include scalability and flexible resource allocation.

Private clouds also address such public cloud concerns as vendor lock-in and regulatory compliance in a third-party infrastructure. Cloud computing is also available as a Hybrid model offering the off benefits of multiple deployment models.

Moving to the cloud is not as worrisome as it may seem, provided an SMB user follows a criteria while choosing a cloud service provider. The following recommendations will help an SMB evaluate cloud service providers:

Reputation: It is necessary to research on the service provider’s reputation, the time duration for which they have been offering cloud services.

Security is Key: SMBs need to check their vendor’s references and investigate case studies with similar organizations. It’s important to understand how the vendor can meet the unique needs of an SMB.

Backing-up and moving your data: It is important to know how the cloud provider backs-up data and accordingly have a contingency plan to move data to another provider whenever necessary. The contingency plan must be periodically tested for Disaster Recovery purposes.

Service level agreements:  Industry certifications cannot always guarantee good service. The Service Level Agreements (SLAs) must be drafted with the contractual language precisely enunciating how the data is stored, secured and accessed with clear financial penalties for underperformance.

Care must also be taken to specify how many people are allowed access to the data post the verification of their identities.

Try before you buy: Most vendors offer trials to prospective customers to boost their confidence in its usage. SMBs must feel confident about retrieving their data conveniently in times of disasters. The trials can be gradually expanded to include confidential data and other critical systems. 

Adoption needs to be a seamless process and the user needs to be confident while making the decision to avail or implement any cloud service. Cloud computing places new demands, on the infrastructure of SMBs and thus the approach to its successful adoption is important. SMB needs and constraints are unique and one model will not suit all.

The author is , MD, India & SAARC at Symantec.