I heard a story recently about the theft of servers from a data room.
The company had locks on all outside doors, but had neglected to install a lock on the server room door.
The thieves would probably have broken that lock, too. Yet the story reminds me how often data rooms get overlooked. The chief reason? Budget … more specifically, lack of budget.
For a while now, those of us who provide Cloud services have been saying that a properly run Cloud environment is inherently more secure than traditional on-premise IT environments.
Now a recent study from Alert Logic backs up that claim. The study compared security in traditional on-premise and service-provider-managed environments of 1,500 organizations with active investment in IT security.
Reading a service-level agreement (SLA) may be as exciting as watching paint dry — but when it comes to creating a hybrid that fits your organization and truly meets its needs, bringing your full attention to your SLA can make all the difference.
So here’s my version of Hybrid Cloud 101:
Expect to customize your hybrid cloud SLA . The whole point of a private cloud is to design and customize cloud capabilities to address your unique needs, and you need a Cloud services provider willing and able to do that in ways that precisely reflect your business requirements so you can achieve the flexibility, scalability, cost reductions, efficiencies, redundancy, and disaster recovery protections you need — without overspending on overcapacity.
As you spend more and more time using Cloud-delivered services , applications, and data, odds are you’ll end up interested in a hybrid Cloud environment that can be deployed in ways that quite specifically meet your organization’s needs, both business-wise and budget-wise.
If your experience has been limited to public Clouds, you’ll need to tread carefully into the realm of hybrids because, by definition, hybrid Clouds are customized. Very quickly, you’ll come to understand that the success of your hybrid Cloud greatly depends on its customizer.
In a recent post, I focused on market research about the use of Cloud computing , notably the eager and stunningly widespread embrace of SaaS and PaaS .
This time, I want to take a look at another key Cloud computing trend— the rise of hybrid Cloud computing. The North Bridge Venture Partners’ 2012 report reinforces this:
These days, you can buy Cloud services from just about anyone.
Some of these providers do it all themselves, from initial needs assessment through design, integration, customization, and implementation all the way to post-deployment support. Even if they provide capabilities via reselling products and services from others, they have deep technical knowledge of what they’ve provided and can stand by it.
So as a customer, your chain of control is unbroken — when you want help or information about your service, you’ll get what you need.
