In our last post we discussed the following for our readers:
- What is “Cloud Computing”;
- The key differences between today and your business potential future in the “cloud”;
- What does this mean for being in a “cloud” based environment; and
- What are the different “Cloud Computing” offering available to the business community.
In our second article we now explore two key areas for you, as one of our readers:
- What are the implications for you NOT considering the “cloud”; and
- What are important areas to discuss with your IT Services Provider when considering the “cloud” as an alternative infrastructure solution.
What are the implications for NOT considering the cloud?
By not investing in the “cloud” what are the potential concerns for your business going forward:
- Increased risks;
- Decreased productivity; and
- Implications for your business.
Increased risks – remaining with an ageing infrastructure opposed to the “cloud”:
- Increases security and privacy concerns;
- Potentially compromises compliance and risk management; and
- In the end reliability around information sourced, stored and provided to your clients and staff.
Decreased productivity – this can happen in a number of areas:
- Response times can suffer for a number of reasons due the inability of current software to operate effectively on more dated hardware;
- Incompatible hardware and software environments leads to more outages; and
- More business time and cost is invested in dealing with risk management issues associated with a fragmented and an ageing infrastructure.
Implications for businesses – is that this can lead to the following:
- Increased costs to maintain your IT infrastructure;
- An inability to invest and provide the latest technologies can affect staff morale and
performance; and - The inability to lower costs and leverage your infrastructure fails to optimize your businesses competencies and capabilities.
What is important to discuss with your own IT Services Provider?
Some items here to consider are:
- Steps being taken to understand both your business and information technology environments?
- What business software applications could be and should be shifted to the “cloud”?
- How do they manage relationships with their panel or group of “cloud” providers?
- What changes has your IT Service Providers made to accommodate the introduction of the “cloud” into your business?
- What SLA’s are in place to optimize your businesses performance?
- How do you now financially manage this part of your business going forward?
- What is the responsibility of your IT Services Provider in sourcing and managing a “cloud” solution for your business:
- Verify the financial health of the “cloud” provider?
- Confirm how the “cloud” offering supports your business?
- What experience and business applications do they support in their “cloud” solution today?
- How do they support your security and privacy requirements here?
- How easy is it to migrate from one “cloud” provider to another?
These are important considerations to ensure that your business maximize the benefits of the “cloud” and this change in how you are supported today.