Cloud technology can be simple if you know who, what, when, where and why to effectively apply it.
The three main areas in Cloud is the following....
- Private Cloud – You design it, buy it, implement it, manage it and replace it. You can do this on premise in your office or put the IT gear in someone else’s server room or data center.
- Public Cloud – Everything lives in someone else’s house and they do all of option A. The myth is that this capital investment shift to someone else’s may be less expensive unless they are scaled out already.
- Hybrid Cloud – You can keep some gear in your place and some sectors in someone else’s, i.e. hosted Microsoft Exchange is in the cloud but your file server is in your house. You can also send many things out to the cloud today such as phones (hosted VoIP), spam control or even web and content filtering.
Before going to the cloud make sure you know WHO will be affected in your company.
Then decide WHAT you want to take to the cloud. Usually email is a good place to start, this gets rid of your internal email server that can at times cost a lot of money on technicians when things go wrong. be sure to look at Cloud email services like Mimecast. http://www.mimecast.com
Another tried and tested Cloud solution that any business can start with is online backup services. Visit http://www.techsupportza.co.za for more information.
You should also consider WHEN to move to the cloud. Usually when your servers and desktops are getting old and need to be replaced it would be a good time to get in your cloud consultant to see if there are opportunities in the cloud. Moving servers to Amazon AWS EC2 cloud or Microsoft's Azure Cloud is a real alternative to buying servers today. Contact us at http://www.techsupportza.co.za for cloud advice.
make sure your Cloud provider guarantees 99% uptime. You should also ask yourself why, why do you want to move to the Cloud. If it is to align IT and business strategy it is probably a good idea, don't just do it because it is that latest fad in IT.