Does cloud computing fit into your business model?

In the business world, cloud computing is still in a growing trend. With more and more interest and investment in cloud computing, business success and failure warnings coexist. To this end, we will explore these issues with the U.S. National Institute of Technology Standards (NIST) Definition of cloud computing:

Cloud Computing provides a new replenishment, consumption, and delivery model for internet-based IT services, which typically includes creating dynamic extensibility and virtualized resources.

In short, it describes the IT architecture, which leverages the capabilities of the Internet to access remote computing resources. When connecting to virtual machines, virtual databases, and virtual networks, we get an extensible, cost effective model, so why is the implementation of cloud-based solutions still facing challenges?

The applicability of the business model to cloud computing is influenced by several factors. In this article we will explore cloud maturity, cloud integration and Internet reliability, and it business maturity.

Cloud Maturity-cloud maturity is based on computation. Cloud Integrity-Cloud based consolidation solution Internet reliability-predictability and robustness of the internet IT business maturity-based on more open architecture business experience and maturity; For example, e-commerce vs. traditional internal applications.

Cloud Maturity

When terminology such as "frontier" and "frontier products" is applied to any technology, you know that you are dealing with a technology solution that is immature or at least not fully mature. Cloud computing also falls into this category, but based on my experience over the years, it and the business may not necessarily compromise risk and overall reliability. Cloud computing is an immature technology solution, its boundaries, protocols and applications can not be clearly expressed, industry standards are not clear. This does not mean that the cloud does not apply to your business and technical needs;

Cloud Integrity

Cloud computing is a new overview of it integrity, challenging traditional architectures that include everything from overall performance, compliance, data Security/integrity, application Recovery, user/client privacy, and financial auditing. Not every kind of challenge we will encounter, we will select some, for reference only.

Gartner has identified key risk areas in the cloud computing area, including but not limited to:

Privileged user access to sensitive data compliance storage units: Different countries have different rules and regulations for data disaster recovery research support for multiuser data isolation applications in the same data storage area: Gartner warns: Cloud services are difficult to investigate, because multiple user landings and data may be positioned together, And it can be spread through ever-changing mainframe and data centers.

2011 Cloud Provider Failure Case:

Google failed to implement the LAPD (Los Angeles police) move to Google app's progress and security parameters Department. Amazon Web Services (AWS) are down in the Virginia Data center, and many customers have no service and no service replacements. Sony, Japan, revealed that hackers visited 7.7 million PlayStation accounts, including names, addresses, passwords and possible credit card information. Amazon's glitch (last one months of April) caused many web site hosts to go down or run slowly. The last was 2009, including Twitter, where hackers visited a number of companies that were stored on Google Apps, the first to be hijacked by Twitter employees ' work email accounts. Although this is related to weak-password protocols, the cloud does create opportunities for these security gaps.

These challenges do not need to be proven for cloud integrity, although users will slow down to cloud-based solutions. Infrastructure cost savings are far from negligible. Companies in cloud computing or companies entering the field should know that they need to really understand the risks and rewards of cloud computing and take ownership to mitigate risk.

Internet reliability

One element of cloud computing is often overlooked, although it is important to implement a cloud-based solution. The United States has a lower Internet connection in the industrialized world, especially when compared with Japan and South Korea. Worse, this trend has not accelerated the pace of Internet connections over the past few years. In addition, our megabytes are more expensive per second.

Depending on the business model and local users, the response time of a cloud-based solution can be affected to varying degrees and may affect its visibility. For example, if you have a business, time-based service delivery has fixed SLAs and distributed workers, poor internet connectivity because overall Network load (Cyber Monday) or simply lack of bandwidth may not allow actual cloud-based solutions to become part of your business.

It maturity

The distributed architecture and the IT maturity of the internet have a significant impact on cloud-based solutions. For example, if your IT organization's e-commerce experience is extensive, then the tools and technologies to transfer secure data over the Internet become part of the culture and it process. When dealing with cloud-based vendors, you need to learn the lessons of internet-based business and apply it to your cloud computing partners. In other words, the cloud is an emergency solution that should not be equated with anything before.

Does the cloud apply to your business model?

Only you and your business can answer this question. I will make some suggestions for anyone who wants to move to the cloud computing field, starting with non-critical applications. Once you get some experience in cloud computing, you'll be able to make basic decisions that will help you determine whether you want to expose key business features to the cloud.

(Responsible editor: Lu Guang)