A Complete Guide to Cloud-Based Platforms: 7 Key Tips
As of 2019 90% of companies were on one form of cloud-based platforms or another, accounting for 60% of all workloads. To put this into perspective, just a year previous it was at only 45%
Not only that, projections say that the global cloud computing market will reach $623.3 billion by 2023. Talk about scaling up!
Each of the different cloud-based platforms allows for the growth of collaboration and efficiency in business settings. To gain a clearer idea and how to maximize these benefits, join us today, and read below.
What Exactly Are Cloud-Based Platforms?
The Cloud platform refers to physical hardware and servers. The machines are in a data center operating together to create a virtual environment. This environment is what people refer to as “the cloud”
The services, software, and other essential operations are all accessed from this virtual environment. Users gain access to this environment through items called “virtual machines”
Virtual machines act like a standard computer. This VM runs an operating system that acts as an access point. Despite this, they do not represent individual physical systems. Virtual machines are each a piece of software running on a single server.
Do They Differ From Cloud Portals?
The cloud portal is the access point, it is the front door of the virtual environment that is the cloud. Without the cloud portal end, users would not be able to access software and services that the cloud platforms offer.
Each portal can be set with specific access privileges. With this you can enable security permissions and add subscriptions.
- Take Inventory of Your Existing Infrastructure
Critical systems that would shut down operation if they stopped could be wise to stay on-site for management. While others, you can outsource, because they are not as urgent of a process.
Items such as email and data archiving could be a cloud operation. They are very important but easy to leave to off-site management
Before implementing a complete cloud strategy, it is important to determine the difference between the two groups.
- Understanding Deployment Types
Early in the platform development process, reviewing a deployment method is wise. The four models have a wide range of pros and cons, serving largely different needs.
- Private
- Public
- Hybrid
- Community
The private structure has the benefit of being very efficient, but this is at the cost of being quite cost-intensive for smaller businesses. It generally is not the best choice for organizations under 1000 workers.
A public model is highly “elastic” and takes to scale up and down with little to no issue. On-demand services are its top quality. Although security ranks lower on this model, especially with larger tenant environments.
The community model thrives on resource collaboration and is most often seen in public service implementation, healthcare for example. Because of this pooling, there can be problems with the accountability of action at times.
The final model, hybrid, is less expensive than the private but more than the others. You can perform critical workloads onsite while delegating lesser to the cloud. It allows for appropriate resource management.
- Updates and Collaboration Made Easy
Internal workers and contractors can work together from anywhere. They have access to the same services and can share files with greater ease. The file size restrictions surrounding emails are no longer a concern when sharing work in progress.
An important aspect of business collaboration is continuity, consistency. Because everything is being shared on one platform, using the same resources there is no d
- Understand the Models
Enter with the mindset that the cloud is not a “place”, but it is a strategy for operations.
- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
- Platform as a Services (PaaS)
- Software as a Service (Saas)
Understanding uses as well as the limitations of each of the services is key. Selecting an inappropriate service could render your workload inefficient or even completely broken.
IaaS is most flexible and scalable of the three. It has the ability to scale as needed by purchasing extra resources and access.
The best implementation of the service is in a startup company. It also does well with one experiencing a large amount of rapid growth. That is where the scalability shines. There are, however, varying concerns with security.
This is because the control over applications and data infrastructure remains with the company.
PaaS is primarily a virtual environment for programmers to develop applications because it is a web-based system there is less concern about what operating systems they are working from and fewer concerns with outside factors.
This software is often referred to as “middleware”. Developers will use partial cloud elements when creating the applications.
This allows for cost-effective development with far less coding. It also makes the applications accessible by a huge audience and easy to scale if they need to handle more user access.
SaaS is the most common cloud service being utilized. Primarily for applications that are being used on both web browsers as well as mobile apps. These need to be implemented for quick collaboration.
It is a cost-effective solution because there is no software or hardware management. However, with that comes little in the way of control and customization.
- Keep an Eye on Security
Security is a benefit of cloud computing but there can be holes. There are constant updates with quickly growing software libraries.
Often many of these pieces of software have short testing periods. Because of this, there is the potential for security weakness, this may leave your team at risk to attack.
It is always wise to work with compliance companies such as FINRA as well as doing your daily scanning to ensure there are no vulnerabilities in your applications.
- Proper Use Can Reduce Carbon Footprint
A company needs fewer resources by outsourcing services. With that, they lower carbon their footprint. The business is using far less in terms of natural resources.
”Over capacities” as they are termed are no longer a concern as the business is only taking care of what is needed to satisfy business demands
- Using Cloud Services to Aid Your IT Workers
Changing to new services can be seamlessly implemented without huge amounts of work hours put in. The same goes for scaling up for high user capabilities, in the past additional hardware would need to be purchased.
With cloud technology all you need to do is buy more access and resources. The IT team is able to do the same for short term projects.
They can scale up the needed resources and then scale back when finished. Testing of new projects is easy with little to no upfront cost or risk. IT needs to configure a development environment once and use it for future projects.
Cloud-Based Platforms Creating a New Computing World
The cost savings and flexibility of cloud-based platforms has changed the computing market forever. This revolutionary technology will only continue to make remote work, collaboration, and development easier and easier.
When the time comes to put in place a strategy, take a minute to look over these benefits, and determine what will work best for you. You won’t regret it!
Once you have, be sure to come by the blog for more tech strategy, business news, and everything in the world of finances.
