Cloudy Thinking

Business Insights
21/10/2015

It’s time for cloud computing to have its day in the sun.

2015 has been truly the year in which cloud computing has emerged into the full glare of daylight.

Massive momentum in enhancements to security, coupled with wider confidence in the systems and infrastructure themselves have resulted in a greater number of businesses and organisations than ever trusting their data to the cloud – and reaping major benefits as a result.

The prospect of greater agility, flexibility and scalability – without appreciable extra IT costs – has been the ‘deal maker’ as far as many businesses are concerned, resulting in at least the possibility of far-reaching changes to how, and where, their staff work.

A raft of celebrity photo leaks has been the catalyst for most of the concerns surrounding virtual working and remote data storage, resulting in many businesses thinking hard about how much of their data they feel they can entrust to the cloud, and whether they are happy with that information sitting in a public place, or would prefer for it to be housed in a dedicated, private cloud set-up.

After all, doesn’t the whole concept of so much data being simply ‘out there’, and in theory accessible by anyone who cares to go looking for it, mean that it’s open season for anyone who fancies dabbling in the murky world of commercial espionage?

Well no, not really. A public cloud, put simply, involves a business or organisation using a third-party provider to house all of its data, and then make it available to authorised users as and when they need it.

This third party has all the infrastructure, i.e. servers, needed to store this information – and therefore carries the risks associated with operating and maintaining it – but puts in place security measures to ensure that only authorised users have access to it.

The data held by any business is absolutely central to its smooth running and, ultimately, its survival, which is why it’s natural for there to be some reluctance to relinquish the control of it.

But that isn’t what cloud computing is about at all – cloud infrastructure providers will even write into their business contracts robust clauses ensuring that data is only accessed by people with the necessary security accreditations.

And even then, it’s quite possible to separate out the operations which are placed in the cloud, and to retain full control over any information concerning compliance matters and/or data used for CRM (customer relationship management) purposes, for example.

Yet there are aspects of a business’s day- to-day operation which readily lend themselves to being easily accessible by the right people at any time.

Resources such as training documents, product video demonstrations and other marketing materials are some of the most obvious examples of this, with there being clear benefits to allowing regulated access to this information, yet having it in a place where the physical and virtual space it takes up belongs to someone else, thereby freeing up more of that capacity in a business’s own IT systems for other essential business functions.

Working smarter, rather than harder, is one of the big buzz phrases emerging from these exciting changes. And while the world’s population of software and systems developers are tending to hold back on committing fully to embracing the cloud, this is one area where the future may lie decisively in the hands of truly forward-thinking and more agile smaller businesses - with the big fish swimming some distance behind.

So the big question is whether your business is ready to be at the forefront of the future of data management – or will you be left in everyone else’s wake?