Cloud Computing to Promote Consolidation: What To Consider?

Cloud computing is all the rage these days and it seems like everyone is trying to becoming involved.  With organizations wanting to consolidate their resources and optimize their existing infrastructure, it is no surprise that cloud vendors are busier than ever.  Building out a network to provide optimal bandwidth and security for various new storage and server technologies can be costly, so it financially makes sense to look to cloud providers.  From a security perspective, most companies neglect to realize that their data no longer belongs to them once it is placed within a cloud service, and organizations forget to examine the safe transfer and storage of their data as it is associated with online storage vendors. 

Aside from consolidation and optimization, there are some other strong driving factors that organizations need to be aware of.  It’s important to keep your staff happy and productive, and with globalization and extensive Internet coverage, people are expecting more.  More now seems to mean cloud-based services. 

Growing organizations are looking for new revenue and have realized that they need to place themselves more in front of their customers.  Banks have bank machines in grocery stores and other entertainment venues.  Customers are now wanting more personalized service from businesses and the ‘have it my way’ generation expect moment in time attractive services.

So, what does this mean for infrastructure and support?

Workforces need to become decentralized and ready to react to any issue or request as it arises.  Dispersing people across the globe is one way to ensure customers are happy.  More people dispersed means more people are going to need to access data remotely, and what better way than to use an already established cloud provider. 

Infrastructures will need to become even more heterogeneous to support and maintain a wide array of differing technologies.  Again, most cloud providers are capable of handling this, or clients can expect to connect to a number of different online presences to get their jobs done. 

Employees under a great deal of stress to get the job done increasingly find they have better resources at home, where security controls are lessened and desktops are not locked down to specific applications.  Process to gain access is reduced.  Tablets and smartphones are on the rise, and self-service infrastructure is being requested. 

What data should you consider keeping in-house?

Mission critical data needs to be secured as best possible, which means this should be kept on your company’s internal network.  Core data, specialized proprietary data, is also best left in-house.  And many organizations are opting to keep collaboration tools under their own infrastructure as well – things like VDI, collaboration tools, and VoIP. 

Source: http://docs.media.bitpipe.com/io_10x/io_106865/item_589299/WhitePaper-Forrester_Successfully_Consolidating_BranchOffice.pdf?fulfilled=true