Are clouds on your horizon?

Cloud computing has been a hot topic in the IT industry for several years and every time you read a newsletter or industry publication, “cloud” is big in the headlines.Major industry players are now offering mature cloud computing services and products to help enterprise customers implement cloud strategies that can move IT services forward.


Those cloud strategies can vary widely. For example, many enterprises are on a declared trajectory toward an internal (or private) cloud, and many more already use external (public) clouds in some way — from software as a service (SaaS) from providers such as Google or Salesforce.com to infrastructure and platform as a service (IaaS, PaaS) from providers such as Amazon, Rackspace, Microsoft, or Strato. Whatever the approach, an enterprise cloud strategy should be as flexible as the cloud itself. It should leverage public clouds when it makes sense to do so, such as for email, office productivity tools, or CRM tools, and could move sensitive applications and data to private or hybrid clouds when these options are more cost effective.

Public Cloud Benefits

Public clouds — off-premises infrastructures that deliver IT services using Internet standards — are attractive to many organizations for a variety of reasons.
• Rapid time to value: With public clouds, businesses can quickly realize the flexibility and savings of cloud
computing because the infrastructure is already up and running.
• Risk transfer: Businesses that use public clouds transfer the risk and expense of managing the infrastructure to the cloud service provider. Service level agreements become the provider’s responsibility rather than the IT department’s, freeing IT professionals to focus on value-add initiatives.
• Capital savings: Public clouds allow organizations to achieve the benefits of cloud computing without
the capital costs associated with building a private cloud.


Private Cloud Benefits
Many businesses look to private clouds to remedy the real or perceived shortcomings of public clouds.
Benefits of private clouds include the following:
• Greater control: Because the hardware and software that make up a private cloud are on premises,
organizations can more fully control and customize the environment.
• Greater peace of mind: A private cloud often may provide greater peace of mind regarding sensitive
applications and data in part because the hardware is on premises.
• New returns on existing investments: Many organizations look to private clouds as a way to further
utilize current server assets.

Hybrid Cloud Benefits

Organizations can take advantage of the benefits of both public and private clouds when they use a hybrid cloud. With this approach, enterprises keep some data, applications, and services in house while outsourcing others to public clouds — all of which are managed through a common framework in the best implementations.

Start your Cloud journey today!!!!