11 Things You Don’t Know About Cloud

Rohit LuthraRohit.luthra@progression.com

The cloud’s great, but it’s still evolving. So there’s lots still to know

What you already know

The Cloud

Marks the shift from

You owning hardware and software and running it to

You buying a service running on them, or you renting them for

your business needs

Pay as you go

Scalable, elastic

But security issues exist. But it’s the future!

Now let’s talk of stuff that most people don’t know about…

1. All clouds are not equal

That’s why pricing of cloud vary so much

You can build clouds out of commodity hardware and ‘not-yet mature’ software. You might want to question before running your ERP on it.

You can build clouds out of hardware and software that’s tried, tested, benchmarked, secure, is backed up by technical experts

You can find private clouds in state-of-the-art setups or in dingy basements

Be aware of your business needs.

2. All clouds are not managed

You would expect the team you bought compute or storage from to run it like clockwork, alert you about downtime or performance bottlenecks, and work proactively to keep your business going

Most clouds are NOT managed. There is no proactive monitoring necessarily unless you pay for it and management is definitely something you should look for before you sign. Sometimes you pay 4-5 times of that low-cost server you signed for.

Does someone do your backups as per schedules, are they managed, are you alerted when they fail?

What’s in the SLA? Check before you sign up.

3. Not as transparent as you think

It looks cheap, but is it really? Per hour costing tends to make it look cheap.

Specifically look at your storage requirements especially when you have a lot of IOPs needs (databases, large # of

transactions) and you may need to sign up for expensive storage (and that may be very different from what you thought it to be initially!!)

Get a clear picture of your needs, and how they will grow. And ask how much it will cost over time.

4. Is it secure? Likely to be more secure than most businesses running their

own show in-house.

But even so, threats are increasing manifold on a daily basis

Enterprise-class security systems must be in place.

Ask for what is installed, who has access, how is access given? Certifications, practices, security architecture, ask about the

kind of vulnerabilities that have happened in the past.

Ask your Cloud Service Provider if Security (for example, Firewall, Intrusion Prevention Systems) services are included or not and what is that you need to pay for, or is it DIY?

5. Clouds will be increasingly local

More businesses will move their clouds applications and hosting to their own countries

Drivers - Privacy, Government Regulations, Latency

Remember Snowden?

6. Availability is loosely defined

Jargon of Tier 2, 3 and 4

99.9982 (1.6 hrs of downtime per year) – this is Tier 3

Cloud service providers have to deal with many challenges (not just power, networks, etc but also OEM patches, incompatibilities, etc)

How do you know what you signed up for? And what are you actually getting?

If any down-time is something that can kill your business, set up services across different data centers and/or clouds

7. Support: All talk, no show?

Is there a number you can call? Is there a human answering your call?

Is there someone solving your problem so that the application doesn’t go down? Or that downtime is averted?

You have compute, storage, security, VPN, OS, infrastructure. You have applications on Windows, Unix and Linux.

Who is responsible for support and maintenance?

Is there a Single Point of Responsibility?

8. Can I change my CSP/XSP?

When you sign up for a cloud service, it usually means that you have signed up for as long as your business application is operational What if you don’t like the service? Or your company merges

with another and you have to migrate the applications?

Yes, but it can be a breeze or sometimes a lengthy and cumbersome process. Common standards are still emerging.

9. Careful about licensing

Pay attention to the licensing models, especially with Microsoft.

Does you service provider allow licensing mobility?

Remember – the cloud is rapidly evolving, please check again if you need to, for what held true a few months/weeks ago

may not be true anymore

10. It’s a delivery model, not a tech

Yes it has evolved out of technologies such as grid computing, utility computing and SaaS (remember ASP?)

It’s a paradigm shift in how IT is delivered and consumed

And it ensures better, more optimal use of IT resources

Great opportunity or threat depending upon how you use it or respond to it

11. Cloud’s not new!

As a concept, it’s about 40 years old!

Resource pooling (time sharing), measured service, and rapid elasticity...old concepts!

What has changed – Internet connectivity – availability, reliability; Mobility, WWW

Thank You!

Rohit LuthraRohit.luthra@progression.com

in.linkedin.com/in/rohitluthra@ProgressionInfo