What is "The Cloud"?
"The Cloud" is a shorthand term used to refer to computational (IT) resources that are provided on demand over the Internet. Often also referred to as "Cloud Computing"
In a simplified analogy, cloud computing works in much the same way as public utilities work for the common people. Instead of each household providing their own utilities - building and maintaining their own electrical generators, natural gas, water, and waste plants - they buy these instead from a public utility company. By doing this resources are shared between many different users, dividing the large cost of maintaining a utility plant over a wide user base, as well as allowing a company with expertise to manage something that would otherwise be difficult for an average person to do.
Cloud computing works in the same way. Users of "The Cloud" share computer equipment and software by connecting, via the Internet or direct connection, to a specialized data centre that holds all the hardware and software necessary for their needs.
The user becomes responsible only for a simple computer that can connect to the internet and access the central data centre. The users then access everything through an email program like Outlook 2010, or a web browser, to connect to the providers servers to pull back the required information. The provider’s servers handle the computing, storage and backup of any relevant data without user intervention. Through "cloud computing", data across multiple servers is synchronised around the world allowing for disaster recovery or collaborative work on files or projects from multiple users around the world.
Is cloud for everyone?
Nearly any business can benefit from some aspect of cloud services. Whether it is moving your main business to the cloud, or just some of your regional offices where you don't have an IT presence. Gartner predict that ‘70% of all IT infrastructures will be in the cloud by 2022’. That’s a staggering figure, but you might be surprised at how much you can move to the cloud. But you shouldn’t rush into it without planning it correctly.
Cloud, cloud everywhere but do you really understand the impact to your business?
- Tangible Cost Savings – Reduce administration and infrastructure costs.
You no longer need to administer your servers or buy new hardware and upgrade to new versions of software every 3 years. It’s now all taken care of for you. - Scalability – You can scale your IT infrastructure up instantly, without the hassle of buying and building new servers.
If you take on a large amount of users quickly or simply want to give your users more space in their mailboxes it’s now a simple matter of clicking a few boxes in your Admin Portal and you are done. No more buying servers or disks and waiting for them to turn up and be installed. - Eco-Friendly – Power and cooling are shared across the cloud platform.
If you have green targets to meet then getting rid of old on-premise hardware solutions and moving to shared infrastructure platforms like the cloud help you reduce your carbon footprint.
Next Steps ...
- Read about what Microsoft offers on the Office 365 cloud platform
- Read about Hybrid Clouds to see whether you need one
- Read about the 5 tiers of Migration Services Parative offer for Office 365
- Book Parative to come in and connect you to the cloud
- Book to see a demo of the Office 365 features in action
- Sign up to a trial of Office 365 right now. Free for 30 days for 25 users. Test it for yourself and see how good the cloud is