By Chase Boiseau and
Carter Gerardo
One of the most
conceptually misunderstood pieces of business infrastructure is cloud storage.
The use of which, has redefined the landscape of many different industries, but
in most cases, large corporations and companies that have geographically widespread
service needs. Cloud based storage is essentially the use of access points to
servers spread across the internet that provide accessibility universally so
that information is kept up to date and efficiency is maximized. This is done
by keeping large volumes of data that may be accessed in small chunks, without
burdening the companies own IT infrastructure. This results in an overall
cost-savings and workload capacity increases. This is only the beginning of the
benefits that a company may experience when using a cloud-based infrastructure
to conduct their business processes.
Benefits of Cloud Computing
To better understand Cloud computing, please view this explanatory video that will give you a quick and thorough explanation of the quickly growing Amazon Web Servers cloud based infrastructure.
A relevant device every
person in the United States uses each day, the cell phone, can utilize cloud
storage to more efficiently and safely store data. Using the iCloud that was
designed for Apple products, media such as songs, photos, movies, contacts,
email, etc. can all be shared with the cloud in the event of a security breach
where the phone becomes inaccessible. This shared data can be used to
completely recreate a user’s profile, data, and applications. A web-based
service tailored to mobile use takes great advantage of the infrastructure of
the cloud, leaving little demand for the mobile device to have strong
computational power, like CPU, memory, and processing speeds. Consumers as well
as employees now can complete a wide range of tasks using their cheaper mobile
devices and do not have to invest in strong powerful mobile devices. Having a backup
solution for vital information and data provides consumers with an extra layer
of security where data is protected when not even a physical device can be
located. Outside of the Apple world, companies such as Google, Dropbox, and
Microsoft also provide cheap consumer services for using Cloud storage. With
services as low as $7 being offered by Microsoft’s OneDrive product, 1 terabyte
of data can be stored at ease.
Real life example from
Chase Boiseau
My
employer last summer, A large construction company, placed me in the IT
Customer Service Representative role. Everything from employee profiles and
data to emails and printers, almost all our technical infrastructure revolved
around the use of cloud-based solutions. One of my main responsibilities as an
Intern was to migrate all our email profiles over from our physical servers to
AWS servers. Although time consuming, this process ended up providing a ton of
positives. To start, all our employee emails can now easily be managed in real
time and issuing licenses to our other cloud-based programs provided
efficiencies. Using Office 365’s subscription-based model we are now able to
manage what users and what machines have access to a Microsoft Office account.
Finding and deleting old/unused email profiles was a time-consuming process
that also cost the company a lot. Now our company has the flexibility to pay
for exactly the number of licenses we need day to day and to not be forced to
spend money on products that will be wasted. Another benefit of cloud-based
computing is its ability to provide stable and scalable service to its
customers. Last year, my employer only experienced a couple small incidents of
downtime, but Amazon’s strong AWS infrastructure was able to resume normal
function within the hour. This still ended up costing my employer thousands of
dollars, but the quick response and recovery from this downtime proved to be
well worth the time invested in migrating our systems to the cloud.
Questions:
- Have you worked for a company that was using cloud-based servers and how did it affect how that company performed its duties? Did it equate to cost savings, efficiencies, scalability?
- Can you think of examples of companies that may (or may not) benefit from adopting a cloud-based model to handle its businesses core processes? Why?
- Do you use or intend to use cloud-based products on your cell phone?
References:
IBM is a company who has pivoted into many sectors, one being the cloud services sector. Their strategies now are based on the idea of simplicity and availability. Their goal is to provide companies with the power to store data in the hybrid cloud. This means that information is stored on the cloud as well as on premise. Since Amazon is dominating the public and private cloud, IBM saw an opportunity to taken advantage of hybrid. I will be working with them next year so this is why I am diving in on them. My question is, what cloud services do you think will dominate the market?
ReplyDeleteThank you for your insight into how IBM is addressing the cloud services needs of business. I think that Amazon is primed to drive the cloud service market as the growth in Tech continues, because of their ability to provide software solutions through internet based access. As the need for services grows, AWS provides more than 90 different services for business and enterprise systems.
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