Managing The Cloud

The idea of having almost an empty HDD with just the OS and a couple of other useful applications while we have the data on the cloud, accessible to us at any point of time, ubiquitously, is something that many would go for. Its like having a house on wheels that’d follow us wherever we go, may it be the south pole or the Sahara Desert or even the moon. Fascinating isn’t it?

Cloud Computing gives various opportunities for all kinds of organizations with different ways of obtaining services and provides benefits that includes flexibility, usability, disaster relief as well as cost reduction. The cloud covers a huge array of services and delivery models ranging from in-house virtual servers to software accessed by multiple organizations over the internet. Many enterprises have been moving their organizations to cloud computing and the economy has driven many firms to consider cloud-based services. When companies start considering cloud, most of them just look at the benefits of the cloud and ignore or side line the most important factors before they shift to a cloud based service. And the important factor that companies need to consider is the ‘Risk Management’. Companies need to understand that the infrastructure wouldn’t be there in their hands once they go on to the Cloud. There would be a huge change in the way the entire organization/business runs, an end of an era in a way. The cultural shift should be monitored and the consequences should be well planned and managed. Once a business goes onto the cloud, the entire business runs on the network connectivity. The data transmission increases many fold and there should be more than a person to manage the entire network service and its performance. If the network fails, the accessibility to the data, applications and resources would also vanish. So, its important to have a backup plan. A really good relationship with the connectivity providers would be an added advantage and that would help for the speed of the resolution.

Moving the business to the cloud is not giving up our managerial role, its more like a shared responsibility. The cloud provider also becomes a partner of our success stories. If the risks are well managed the rewards are tremendous.

© 2012 Ajan Kancharla