Have you ever studied clouds? As a private pilot, I have, and I can tell you that when flying at low levels, the one to avoid is the Cumulus Granitus (accumulated granite). When it comes to IT clouds, there are a few clear choices. The ones I want to talk about today are the abbreviations IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS.
Understanding the differences and what they offer should make it easier to determine the right one for your business.
Today, it’s no longer a clear choice to simply upgrade your in-house server to a newer model as your old equipment heads towards end-of-life. It’s imperative that cloud alternatives be considered and costed. They may not always stack up, but as more people are shifting to cloud solutions and prices are coming down, clouds are worth considering before making an investment that will see you restricted to in-house servers for another three-to-four years.
I’m sure that when you select a provider of cloud services and solutions they will be reliable, secure, will have scale and a proven track record of protecting data. Importantly, your security, redundancy and recoverability from a disaster will be looked after.
Now it’s a matter of understanding which technology platform will work best for you. Looking from a distance, cloud technologies may seem to be similar in what they offer but the differences will impact the nature of the service offered, as well as the price.
If all you need is a simple set of tools, then Software as a Service (SaaS) with a hosted application will let you subscribe to, connect to and use without worrying about how the application is installed or how the data is managed. This is the simplest form of cloud computing to use and manage, with examples such as Office 365, Xero and Salesforce.com. Each has an Application Program Interface (API) that allows software developers and integrators to write code that connects programs together. As such, it’s common for SaaS solutions to allow integration with other local and cloud-based solutions. For example, integrating a CRM and a finance application to share one address book allows the users many benefits. You could automate updates, pull financial status information into the customer database, and inform other divisions, like sales, if an account is on stop credit without having to visit two systems.
Platform as a Service (PaaS) is a more customisable solution where you may own the application and install it on an operating system platform provided by a reseller from a data centre. You are not buying or leasing any hardware, just the right to use part of a larger system from the operating system upwards. So now you are responsible for installing the application and managing the data. It’s more usual to do this with an application you previously ran in-house and wish to outsource the layers of technology that add no value to your business – without losing control of the environment.
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) adds the layer of the operating system to what you are managing, and lets you customise more of your environment than PaaS would. This option is best for more complex tools that need special server configuration. This is worth considering if you have legacy applications that require maintaining an older operating system, or if you have strong integration with the operating system.
The most basic form of cloud, often thought of as private cloud, is Server Virtualisation which I hope is not news anymore (we have been using Server Virtualisation in the SME space for many years now)! This simply adds a layer to the technology stack called the virtualisation layer, which is software that’s installed on a server or PC before the first operating system goes on. Basically, it allows the one piece of hardware to support multiple virtual instances of operating systems. This allows us technical people to shift logical servers from one piece of hardware to another, and manage load balancing and availability between multiple physical servers. This is a great way to reduce large data centres with multiple single server installs to a much smaller space with multiple servers installed across just a few pieces of hardware – which of course is significantly cost saving.
There are benefits to be drawn from selecting the right cloud strategy for your business, so make sure you find a trusted technology partner who can ensure you are making the best choices for your future.
David Markus is the founder of Combo – the IT service company that ensures IT is never an impediment to growth. We win awards for the service we offer, so If your IT environment is slowing you down, contact Combo on 1300 726 626 to organise a complimentary consultation with David.
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