Head in the clouds?
“Moving to the cloud is cheaper”, “It will be easier to manage”, “You don’t need your servers anymore” .
These are all phrases that appear is LinkedIn posts, sales presentations, and opening statements from some of the leaders in public cloud and SaaS solutions… But are they right?
A quick recap of the cloud. The best way to think of the cloud is hardware in someone else’s building. The hardware could be servers, network, security, or data related, either way, it’s accessed over the internet and is not in your office!
When it comes to an evaluation of the cloud and what it could bring to your business, it is best to start with an understanding of what you need. If you are working in an office 90% of the time and have a number of applications reliant on databases or license servers, then a move to the cloud wouldn’t necessarily bring you much benefit. In comparison, if you were looking to adopt a hybrid or agile working model that requires flexibility of access to IT services, then the cloud is worth considering.
Taking a step towards hybrid or agile working fundamentally requires making the IT services accessible in your office, accessible outside the office. To achieve this, you have three options.
Option one - open the door to your office
The only secure way to create a link into the office nowadays is using a Virtual Private Network (VPN). A VPN works by creating a secure connection from your device to your office and providing access to IT services. VPN’s must be managed and require either a hardware or software VPN server inside the office to manage the security and connections being made. VPN’s suffer from a common problem of a bottleneck making the end user experience slow, frustrating, and in some cases unreliable and while the bring a level of security, there is a compromise to the user experience and effectiveness.
Option two - take the IT services to the cloud
Pick up everything, and move it to the cloud. Take your pick from one of the big three, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), or Amazon Web Services (AWS) and move your servers, network, data and applications all in one go. (It sounds simple if you say it quickly!). Moving everything to the cloud removes the dependency on your local IT services, but does introduce a new dependency of your internet connection as without it, you cannot access anything. That being said, sending everyone to the local coffee shop to piggy back of the wifi could enable you to continue working, it is less than ideal.
Option three - the best of both
Use the cloud to your advantage. Identifying what you need to access outside the office enables you to consider a more effective move to the cloud that supports working from home and the office. This approach enables you to “dip your toe” into the cloud, without over committing, and the good news is, you have probably already started! If you are using services like Google Drive, Microsoft Teams, SharePoint or OneDrive then you’re on the right track towards a hybrid architecture.
So which option is best?
Hybrid. Right now, a complete move to the cloud just isn’t practical, cost effective, or even viable for most organisations. Whether you are using legacy applications or storing millions of files, these obstacles make the removal of in house IT services much harder to tackle. For most organisations a hybrid approach offers an accessible and cost effective move to the cloud and thankfully, there are solutions out there that offer the best of both for server infrastructure, data storage, device security, and end user device management.
Examples of cloud offerings that enable a hybrid approach.
Server management - Veeam
Data storage - Egnyte
Device Security - Microsoft Defender
End user device management - Microsoft Intune
How to start
Before you begin, it is best to start with a subset of the business and look to find cloud services that could support the required workflows, features and functions. It is important to keep a few things in mind when evaluating possible solutions.
Scalability - ideally, you want to have a set of cloud services to support the whole business so be sure to evaluate the scalability of any cloud solution.
Security - finding a solution that has all the bells and whistles you could possibly imagine, but only a basic security option is best avoided.
Ownership - you will want to keep some control over the services you are putting in the cloud and ironing out who owns the services is essential early on.
Accessibility- what happens if your internet fails or the cloud service falls over? Understanding the operational and cost impact to your business enables you to prepare for a disaster recovery scenario and plan accordingly.
If a move to the cloud may seem daunting, or you had started but fear you may have lost control, we can help to bring some clarity to your setup and help to design a plan towards a hybrid cloud adoption.