Feature:
What you Need to Know About the Cloud
Can you start of by explaining what the ‘Cloud’ is?
The first thing to remember is that the term ‘Cloud’ is just a marketing term. It is a way to describe the provision of IT services based around networked computers. So, instead of accessing data from the hard disc in your laptop, you are accessing data (or services) from something much bigger that could be in another part of the world.
I read that there are different types of offerings or services. What are these?
You can have cloud services ranging from infrastructure (IaaS) to software (SaaS) to business processes (PaaS). You can have the 'Cloud' wholly owned and run by you, from your data centre (think of this as a collection of powerful computers with very large hard discs). Alternatively, it could be provisioned by someone else (think Amazon, Microsoft, etc.), consumed services hosted externally (Google, SAP), or a hybrid cloud where a company runs some cloud services and buys in others. You can buy cloud compute (CPU), cloud storage (data), cloud software services or cloud business process services. Or most likely you would have a combination of the above. Note, when you use Google or Facebook, you are using a free cloud SaaS service or set of services.
So why are all the IT companies offering Cloud services?
Good point. They will say that is gives you more flexibility and you can access the data on most devices. Though I am sure that they are motivated by the fact that offering Cloud services substantially reduces piracy and so they can make more money.
But remember, when you use a cloud supplier it is just like using any other supplier, only that you pay per use (when it’s not free). This means it is an operational spend rather than a capital spend, which causes all kinds of fun and games with the finance department come budgeting time. And like any other supplier, the contract should say what happens if the supplier fails - how do you get your data back. Once you have access to the data, you can shift to a new supplier. Of course, it is never that simple.
What you Need to Know about the Cloud
By the Information & Communications Technology (ICT) Committee
We sit down with Co-chairperson of the ICT Committee and CEO/Co-Founder (Asia) of Acuutech, Hitan Mehta, to ask all those questions we’ve been meaning to ask but never got around to doing so.
... instead of
accessing data from the hard disc in your laptop, you are accessing data (or services) from something much bigger that could be in another part of the world.