Choose a public or private cloud?

Today's Society, the Division of labor is becoming more and more thin, how to transport peacekeeping applications for IT services to become more diverse choice for Enterprise is forced to choose. For the general Enterprise also has a problem that bothers them, then is to choose their own build or third-party services.

For the average enterprise, the ultimate need is to be able to help and promote the application of the service, not the underlying IT infrastructure. But IT infrastructure is the foundation of these applications, so businesses have to take care of both. In the traditional way, for the application of the enterprise can choose the market for example, many enterprises adopt the market ERP and CRM, etc. package software. In addition, if the requirements of the enterprise are relatively special, or for other reasons, the enterprise can choose to develop its own application. For the application of the operating environment, enterprises can choose to build their own data center to operate the dimension, you can choose a Third-party hosting platform or cloud computing platform to run the application.

The cloud computing platform is an extension and development of the traditional hosting platform, providing a higher level of service automation than the managed platform. In fact, we can use these applications and services as a way to achieve different levels of outsourcing. Whether the application or the bottom of the platform, we can build and use the third party services two dimensions to explore, from two dimensions of the application of the construction and operation of the way.

Obviously, the stronger the enterprise's ability to control the application, the closer to the upper right corner, the better the scale effect. Enterprise is to choose their own construction and operation of IT services, or directly using a third-party public cloud services, which are engaged in the industry, enterprise size and application types and many other factors.

Here are four different ways to discuss this.

1. Location of IT facilities

When the enterprise builds a private cloud platform itself, IT infrastructure is its own, usually within the enterprise. When using the public cloud platform, IT infrastructure is located in a third party data center. The exception here is that there is now a concept of a virtual private cloud (VPC, Private Cloud) proposed by a service provider that refers to a dedicated computing environment that is isolated by technology within a Third-party data center and connected to the enterprise through a secure channel.

2. Infrastructure differential

For many large enterprises, their IT infrastructure has often adopted different technologies and platforms due to years of it construction and technology evolution, which means that these enterprises are using heterogeneous platform environments. However, for most of the current public cloud service providers, their platforms are often built on inexpensive and standard hardware platforms. These standardized ways to build a platform to better cost-effective to meet the needs of most users. In addition, in the provision of services, public cloud service providers often provide the most popular, the most extensive and centralized services. Therefore, for the public cloud services, its services and environment are often homogeneous, which is not the same as the enterprise's own IT environment.

3. Business model

If companies choose to build their own IT systems, it is clear that a large amount of one-time investment is needed to buy software, hardware, and even the infrastructure of the data center. In the corporate financial statements, this is reflected in a relatively large fixed cost. However, if the enterprise adopts the public cloud service provided by the third party, then according to the current charging method of cloud computing services, the enterprise can choose the monthly service fee or the amount of it resource usage to pay. In this way, the enterprise does not need a large amount of upfront investment can use IT services, it is reflected as a continuous operating costs.

4. Different levels of control

The enterprise itself constructs the IT system is as the enterprise assets completely by the enterprise own, and by the enterprise own to carry on the dimension. Although the enterprise needs its own IT operational team, the advantage is that the enterprise can independently control IT systems, and according to the actual needs of the transformation and customer. And for the public cloud services, the enterprise is actually using the rental services, the advantage is that they do not need to manage the basic platform services, but for enterprises this also reduces its ability to customize, because all the infrastructure, including servers, networks and storage, and the software platform above is maintained and managed by a service provider.

Strategies for cloud computing in different companies

Because different enterprises are engaged in the nature of the industry, the size of the enterprise and cultural differences, so their sensitivity to cost and security are different. For example, large enterprises are more sensitive to safety than small businesses, while small businesses are more sensitive to cost than large enterprises. These differences inevitably affect the way enterprises adopt cloud computing strategies and methods. Large enterprises have generally invested heavily in it construction, so they will continue to maintain the existing computing environment from the perspective of protection of investment, but they need to transform the existing environment according to some concepts and technologies of cloud computing. Compared to small businesses, these large enterprises often have their own technical team, the customization of IT services requirements and capabilities will be higher.

Small businesses are less likely to have the necessary skills to build a cloud-computing platform, instead they will think more about the services of some public cloud. These public cloud service providers may have industry-specific skills, they have higher cloud service skills than small-business-owned skills, and use the scale effect to keep as low a cost as possible. Public cloud services are an opportunity for small businesses as it lowers the threshold for high quality IT services and allows small businesses to quickly enter the marketplace without the constraints of IT services. From an IT service level perspective, the public cloud makes it possible for small businesses to stand on the same horizontal line as large enterprises.

In the long run, the public cloud will play an important role in enterprise IT services. However, over a long period of time, the enterprise will adopt a hybrid cloud computing services. Large enterprises will continue to let IT departments manage and deploy internal IT resources, some of which are private clouds. IT departments will also assume responsibility for IT service sourcing, determining when to leverage external service providers, when to deploy internally, and when to use both to achieve specific services. In other words, the development of cloud computing in large enterprises will be based on "first private after the public", and gradually reach the public cloud service-oriented stage.

Private cloud services will be the cornerstone of future public cloud services, and over time, private cloud and public cloud resources will be mixed or interleaved, and the share of public cloud services will grow larger. Proper investment in private cloud computing will facilitate the future gradual use of public cloud services by the enterprise. Many of the investments in private cloud computing can prepare companies to deploy public clouds. These investments are not only technological changes, but also processes, business interfaces, and even cultural changes. When building a private cloud, an enterprise can start with a relatively simple platform of IaaS type, and then move on to a relatively complex PAAs-type cloud computing platform.

Enterprises need to recognize that some IT services are destined to take the cloud model, while some other IT services to the existing business with more integration and close interaction. Once you decide that a particular service needs to be done through the cloud, decide whether to wait for a more mature cloud service or to develop private cloud services as soon as possible, and determine which is more useful for business development. For some IT services that require close integration, customization and diversification of the business, they should be the focus of private cloud construction. Others that focus on independent, standardized interfaces, and non-customized IT services can serve as potential public cloud service candidates.

The development direction of cloud computing is now more clear, the enterprise is suitable for the strategy of cloud computing should not be late. This will help companies prepare for cloud computing earlier and better implement cloud computing strategies, while also helping companies to transition more smoothly to future public cloud services.

Under what circumstances is not suitable for cloud computing

Although cloud computing can benefit businesses in many ways, it is clear that nothing is omnipotent. Everything has two sides, cloud computing is no exception. Under current technical conditions, not all applications are suitable for the cloud computing approach. Here we discuss some scenarios that are not suitable for cloud computing applications, and of course this is mainly about public cloud scenarios.

1. Safety and Compliance

At this stage, security concerns and regulatory limitations may be one of the biggest concerns of companies adopting cloud computing. In an enterprise-built environment, the enterprise has complete control over the hardware and service processes, including the location of the data center, who can access and use these infrastructures, and what security processes to adopt. But if a third-party cloud computing service is adopted, the company faces security and compliance concerns. Some countries, for example, require that data centres for the storage of enterprise data be within their own countries, while others require that enterprise data not be stored in data centres in selected countries. Therefore, this requires enterprises to choose a service provider to pay attention to the cloud computing service provider's data center specific location is optional, pay attention to the use of these services and national regulations whether there is a conflict between.

In addition to national laws and regulations, some enterprises also need to follow the corresponding industry and listed enterprises need to follow the rules and standards. For example, companies listed in the United States are required to follow the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (Sox, Oxley Act), medical applications to comply with the HIPAA Act (Tiyatien Ping Portability and Accountability Act). It is also important to consider whether a cloud service provider can allow users or third parties to audit them to verify the completeness and effectiveness of their security policies. Not all cloud services providers can meet these compliance requirements, so companies must evaluate these factors in detail when weighing the use of cloud computing services.

2. Hardware dependencies

If the application of the enterprise has special hardware requirements, then the cloud computing solution is generally not appropriate. This particular requirement can be divided into two categories. One is that applications require special hardware support, such as GPU support, special chipset or encryption hardware. For applications that require special hardware support, cloud computing service providers are unlikely to provide support, even if they happen to be offered by a service provider, but there is little room for users to choose from, thereby reducing the bargaining power. The other is that although the use of standard, general-purpose hardware, but the size of the hardware and the number of special requirements. For example, enterprise applications need to fully control the environment in which it runs, such as how much memory, how many processor cores, and so on. Therefore, for these applications, we recommend a self-built approach rather than a cloud computing approach.

3. Integration with existing applications

Whether it's a process, application layer, or data level, if the enterprise has two applications that need to be tightly integrated, we generally recommend that they not be too far apart. In most scenarios, this internet-based application integration brings some stability, performance, and so on. Therefore, if the enterprise has an application to the data center with a close integration of applications, then put this application on the cloud computing platform needs to be a special demonstration, need to carefully study the two application integration in the end, the network delay will affect the use of services and so on.

4. Real-time application

Cloud computing has powerful processing power, but it is serviced by different data centers distributed across the Internet. If the application of the enterprise is not high in response time, such as a typical Web application or a batch application, then cloud computing services can fully meet the performance requirements, but if it is some time demanding applications, such as real-time applications, then cloud computing may not be appropriate. Because even if the use of CDN Services, network transmission over the Internet latency for real-time applications is still relatively large.

5. Lack of demand

Although cloud computing is a very popular word at the moment, we still do not advise companies to do cloud computing purely for the sake of fashion. This lack of demand for the project will bring additional risks and costs to the enterprise. For example, a legacy of traditional application is not a problem to run, but also to meet the needs in the foreseeable future, so unless it is very clear to the need for transformation, it is generally not recommended for the future of cloud computing and its transformation. We believe that the adoption of cloud computing is a gradual process, rather than overnight all applications are "great leap forward" to the era of cloud computing.