Cloud technology has seen extraordinary growth over the last decade – comparing statistics from 2010 reveals the exponential growth that the sector has experienced. With an estimated value of $24.65 billion 10 years ago, the cloud industry has now surpassed $100 billion, and is looking to reach $150 billion by the end of the year.
The cloud’s influence on today’s society extends far beyond enterprise infrastructure and business workloads. Did you know, the average person uses thirty-six cloud-based services every day? Cloud has truly revolutionised the way we live our lives.
It’s understandable then, that such an innovative and influential technology is greeted with its fair share of suspicion and misconceptions. The cloud’s many benefits are well documented, but some inaccuracies persist.
This blog will look to address these concerns from a business standpoint and clear up any questions or misconceptions you may have surrounding cloud technology. We’ll also talk about how Secura’s Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) and other cloud services relate to each point.
Cloud payment plans can seem high at first. But it’s important to consider some of the IT overheads you will save on, or simply eradicate. You’ll no longer have to invest in physical infrastructure, which can be a hefty investment to begin with, but also requires updates and refreshes.
When comparing cloud costs, it’s also important to consider improvements on performance and efficiency. Cloud technology also enables your IT environment to be more closely right-sized to your business – removing any under or over provisioning of resources. With a resource-based pricing model, you’ll only pay for what you actually use.
Secura’s VPC service is designed to be flexible, so any hosting requirements can be continually scaled to match variable demand, through seasonal peaks for example, or to align with business growth. With a pricing model that allows for resources to be billed depending on usage, the VPC service provides a cost-effective hosting solution, and customers only pay for what they use – no hidden charges or surprise bills at the end of the month.
This is actually a major misconception of cloud technology. The idea of processing and storing your data offsite, and the ability to access this data from anywhere at any time does on the surface seem like a security risk.
However, it’s important to remember that for a cloud hosting provider, their reputation is everything and therefore, the security of their customers’ data is paramount (or certainly should be). This means the security layers that protect their cloud services should be deep and well invested in – far more so than most in-house solution.
Cloud solutions can also deploy extended security technologies. At Secura, we provide Web Protect, a fully managed enterprise grade security suite. This advanced package enhances online security and is designed to boost the security of critical online applications. Web Protect includes DDoS mitigation, network intrusion prevention, malware and virus protection and powerful encryption.
It is still always worth discussing the specific security features offered by your provider, so you are aware of what is available to meet your requirements and that your platform has sufficient protection.
It may be the case that not every cloud solution will work for every business. It’s important to work with a provider that understands you and your business – customer service and support is one of the most important qualities to look for. Your cloud provider should work with you to set support parameters – what you want to keep control over and what you want to pass onto them.
Ultimately, control over your cloud platform sits with you. For many, a great benefit to a cloud solution is that it frees up time for your team to focus on running the day-to-day operations of the business, and leaves many of the IT infrastructure related tasks to a cloud partner.
A common service we often manage for our customers is data backup. Backing up systems and data can be a lengthy and often tedious process. At Secura, we can protect critical applications and business data through our backup as a service (BaaS) – a robust solution designed to provide complete reliability and resilience.
This is partly true, but to generalise all cloud solutions as having shared resources that effect performance levels for all tenants, is not. The cloud by definition means computing resources, such as infrastructure and applications, that can be shared and accessible from anywhere. But different shared cloud solutions provide environments with different ways of allocating resource between multiple tenants.
In a multi-tenant environment, computing resources are shared, with separate platforms within the infrastructure for each tenant. This allows tenants to have their own secure cloud environments, isolated from other users, but with a shared pool of resource that can be quickly accessed and added to each customer platform.
At Secura, our Virtual Private Cloud allows shared resource pools in a multi-tenant environment. Using technology from VMware, we create complete isolation of networks and data, with protected resource levels and guaranteed performance for every customer environment.
Technology moves at such an alarming rate, it’s true that cloud as we know it today will likely be very different in another decade. The rise of 5G and edge computing will no doubt play a part in this. However, this has to be seen as more of a progression than a completely new way of operating.
Cloud will provide the foundations, and shape new technologies from this point on. If you aren’t cloud enabled, you risk missing out on what new cloud-based technology has to offer. On-premise environments are likely to become less relevant and compatible with external systems as time goes on.
Migrating to cloud infrastructure can be a complicated and stressful process. But at Secura, we’re committed to taking to the time to completely understand you and your business, to ensure the process is as efficient and straight-forward as possible. We pride ourselves on delivering bespoke solutions, and our approach to migration is no different. The team will work closely with you to create a migration strategy that is tailored to fit your specific business requirements.
If you would like to talk to us about migration or any of Secura’s cloud services, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.
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Matthew is Secura's content specialist, producing gripping, emotionally complex, edge of your seat, cloud hosting articles and videos.
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