Tag Archive for: Cloud Computing

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Moving to the Cloud: Regulatory Compliance

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Green_GaugeThis post is the seventh in a series addressing concerns organizations may have that prevent them from moving the cloud-based solutions.

Moving to the cloud often entails more than switching to an email service or spinning up a some cloud-based storage and servers.  For many businesses — including Small and Mid-Size Businesses (SMBs) — regulatory requirements place demands on IT systems and security.  And, while these requirements impact in-house and cloud solutions, moving to the cloud requires planning.

The most common regulations for SMBs relate to consumer (customer) privacy:  HIPAA, which protects personal health information, and PCI, which protects personal and credit related information.  Many SMBs, however, must also meet the requirements of Sarbanes/Oxley, FINRA, SEC, and various state regulations.

The solution:  Integrating Solutions.

Fortunately, the tools and systems exist to provide compliance with data security and privacy regulations.  Cloud vendors are creating environments and the management controls necessary for customer regulatory compliance and certification.

The challenge is to make sure that all of the pieces work together.

  • Message Archive/eDisovery:  Manages retention of email as official business records and provides the eDiscovery and audit tools necessary to meet federal subpoena requirements.
  • Message Encryption: Encrypts email at the individual message level based on content and rule sets, requires users to authenticate before accessing the message, and prevents forwarding.
  • Two Factor Authorization / Single Sign-On: Provides identity management services and audit trails beyond core products in order to meet regulatory or policy requirements 
  • Third Party Encryption:  Encrypts data in the browser or client before transmission to the cloud, providing a second level of encryption prior to the encryption provided by the cloud vendor.  In the event of a vendor data breach, the exposed data would be encrypted.

These types of solutions, and others, provide cloud environments with the capabilities to meet regulatory requirements.  Vendor contracts and policies should still be carefully reviewed for any terms and conditions that threaten compliance.

And remember, no vendor can ensure compliance.  Compliance exists when the technology meets the technical standards and is used in accordance with policies and procedures that meet the regulatory intent.

Next Post in the Series:  Internationalization

Previous Post in the Series:  Integration with Legacy Systems

Moving to the Cloud: Integration with Legacy Systems

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Green_GaugeThis post is the sixth in a series addressing concerns organizations may have that prevent them from moving the cloud-based solutions.

Very few businesses go “all-in” when moving into the cloud.  Most businesses start their move into the cloud with specific applications and services.  For small and mid-size businesses, the trend is to go cloud with critical core services, such as email and calendaring, and/or applications, such as CRM.  Over time, businesses add additional applications and services, such as file services, and hosting of legacy applications and servers.

The result:  Most businesses have a hybrid environment of on-premise and cloud solutions.

For many businesses, this creates a new need to integrate existing systems with new cloud-based applications and services.

While this may seem overwhelming, the scope of the integration depends, in large part, how well your in-house systems integrate today.   For most small and mid-size businesses (SMBs), legacy application integration focuses on a few key features:

  • Email / Messaging:  Legacy applications and systems should be able to send notifications, alerts, and other messages.
  • Shared Storage:  Legacy applications may need to use cloud-based storage for data storing and sharing.  Depending on the need, direct access may be preferred to a sync solution.  Also, business applications often need locations in which to deliver reports and other automated output.  Still others may need to be able to link to documents saved in the file service.
  • Contacts:  Legacy applications, particularly those responsible for customer relationship management (CRM) functions (sales, support, service, marketing) will need to synchronize contact information in a way that does not result in duplicate data or data loss.  The same holds true for Enterprise Resource Process (ERP) and Professional Service Automation (PSA) systems.
  • Calendars / Events:  CRM, ERP, and PSA systems may also look to sync or manage calendars and events.  As with contacts, avoiding duplication and lost data is critical.
  • Data Import/Export:  Legacy systems may have the ability to import/export data from/to other systems.  In some instances, the import/export is manual or scripted to occur at specific intervals.  Some systems support automated synchronization or provide an interface for real-time data exchange.

When looking at cloud solutions, take a moment to research your current environment and needs:

  • What integration exists today?  Does it help or hinder?
  • What integration capabilities do legacy applications support that are not currently in use?  Would these be useful/helpful/meaningful?
  • What integration do you need, or want, to make your business more efficient?
  • What capabilities does the proposed cloud solution have for integration?  Can you leverage these to your advantage?  Is the cost of integration worth the potential benefits?

With a short assessment, organizations can determine if, when, and how to best integrate new, cloud-based solutions with legacy applications and systems.  As with any IT project, the focus should be on resulting business value.

Next Post in the Series:  Regulatory Compliance

Previous Post in the Series:  Lock-In

Moving to the Cloud: Lock-In

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This post is the fifth in a series addressing concerns organizations may have that prevent them from moving the cloud-based solutions.

When looking at cloud solutions, most organizations spend a great deal of time, appropriately so, investigating how they will move data and processes into the cloud.  At the same time, organizations should understand how they will get data out of the cloud should they decide to switch solutions in the future.

While this seems like a new issue or concern, the reality remains that organizations switch systems and data migration and integration issues exist — cloud or not.  The same analysis and decision making process that organizations follow for in-house systems should be followed for cloud solutions.

Platform as a Service (PaaS) solutions provide environments that, in general, enable data and application movement.  Moving to a Windows Server image in the cloud is not much different from moving to an in-house Windows server.  Key considerations focus on the amount of data and the time/efficiency of moving the data on or off the cloud server.

Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions can prove more challenging.  Migrating to or from a cloud-based application provides the same challenges as migrating data to a new in-house application.  Record matching, data scrubbing, and data translation are all issues to be considered.  In addition to the strength of the import utilities, understand the strength and cost of the export utilities.  Some SaaS applications only provide comprehensive export capabilities at their most expensive licensing options.

Fear of “Lock-In” should not prevent organizations from moving into cloud solutions.  Rather, a small amount of due diligence will ensure that the “how” and “how much” of a future migration is understood.

Next Post in the Series:  Integration with Legacy Systems

Previous Post in the Series:  Privacy

Moving to the Cloud: Provider Reliability

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This post is the third in a series addressing concerns organizations may have that prevent them from moving the cloud-based solutions.

One of the challenges in planning a move to the cloud remains the relative youth of the current industry.  While the concept of cloud computing is not new (tip your hat to Control Data in the 1980’s and their mainframe time-sharing service), most cloud computing services are relatively new.  Even services from long-standing, reliable vendors — like IBM and Dell — are relatively new ventures for these firms and have yet to be proven in a long-term market.

Organizations looking at any cloud service, be it SaaS, PaaS, or IaaS, must consider the reliability of the provider.  In doing so, it is the customer that must also understand the benchmarks being used by vendors when reporting their statistics.  Considerations include:

  • What is the availability of the service?  How well does the service provider meet their Service Level Agreement (SLA) benchmarks in terms of total downtime and/or service disruptions?
  • What is the reliability of the service?  How often does the service experience issues?  While most organizations tout availability, 6 disruptions lasting 10 minutes may have more impact on your operations than a single hour-long disruption.
  • Does the provider have performance benchmarks?  If so, how well does the provider meet the benchmarks?  In moving to the service provider, what expectations/needs will you have with respect to WiFi capacity, fixed network performance, and Internet capacity?   In many cases, the limiting factor on end-user performance is not the service provider or the Internet speed — it is the organization’s internal wired and wireless capacity.
  • What level of support do you expect?  Understanding how the provider delivers support — directly or through resellers/partners — is key to an organization’s long-term satisfaction with the service.
  • Does the vendor have the financial stability for the long-term?  With the number of start-ups in the cloud space, this factor may be the most difficult to ascertain.  Looking at the company’s financials, funding levels, and profitability can provide some insight.  Assessing whether the provider would be a good buy-out or merger target can also instill confidence that your provider will not go away unexpectedly.

With a modicum of due diligence, organizations can assess the reliability of cloud solution providers before making a commitment.  Reputable vendors will openly share their data and will not hesitate to discuss failures and how similar events will be prevented going forward.  And while, this type of discussion feels new, it is the same process CIOs and IT decision makers have been using for decades as they evaluate new technologies and vendors.  The players are new, but the process remains the same.

Next Post in the Series:  Privacy

Previous Post in the Series:  Moving to the Cloud: Cost Savings

 

Moving to the Cloud: Cost Savings

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Green_GaugeThis post is the second in a series addressing concerns organizations may have that prevent them from moving the cloud-based solutions.

Will moving to the cloud save money?

The answer is a definite, absolute … maybe!

Whether or not a move to the cloud saves money depends on the in-house services being replaced and the cloud-based services taking their place, as well as the impact the change will have on related IT services and your business.

In our experience, most companies see savings over 3-year and 5-year periods of 30% or more.  Some companies see total cost of ownership (TCO) savings of up to 70%

When looking at 5-year TCO, organizations must make honest projections on IT spending to maintain the status quo and/or upgrading systems.  Beyond projected hardware and software replacements and upgrades, the analysis should include the cost of services and supporting systems (backup, anti-virus, security, etc.).  The analysis should also assess soft costs for administration, support, and estimated down time.

The challenge remains making the comparison equivalent.  For example, moving from a single in-house Exchange server to Google Apps for Business is a move from a system with several single points of failure to a highly redundant and highly available service.  If improving availability is an objective of the move to the cloud, the comparison should include the cost of upgrading the Exchange environment for redundancy.

A final consideration should include any business enablement that comes from the move into the cloud.  Will the cloud service enable the business to operate more efficiently and/or in new, more productive ways?  Improved collaboration, real-time communications, and access to information are all examples of how Google Apps for Business enables businesses over traditional email services.

In straight dollars and cents, not every company will see savings when moving to cloud-based solutions.  With better availability and expanded capabilities, cloud computing solutions can deliver better value, even when the price tag is higher.

Next Post in the Series:  Provider Reliability

Previous Post in the Series:  Moving to the Cloud: Security

 

Moving to the Cloud: Security

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Green_GaugeThis post is the first in a series addressing concerns organizations may have that prevent them from moving the cloud-based solutions.

At some point in the evaluation and decision process, the issue of security comes to the forefront as organizations look at cloud computing.  Vendors and resellers, like Cumulus Global, often provide two answers — both of which are correct:

  1. Cloud computing providers need their environments to be secure, and they invest time and money on security.  Most cloud providers deliver environments and systems that are significantly more secure than their customers could provide for themselves.
  2. Standard cloud security may not be sufficient to meet specific business needs.  Just as they would with in-house systems, cloud computing customers should be prepared to add additional security services to meet business requirements such as HIPAA, SEC, FINRA, and PCI compliance.

As a first step, organizations moving to the cloud should review the security capabilities of their solution provider.  Beyond the technology, look for certifications such as SSAE-16 Type I and II, ISO 27001, and FISMA.  Make sure that the provider’s security practices are reflected in their terms of service, contracts, and service level agreements.  Finally, verify if and how you can add security capabilities to meet business or industry requirements.

With a reasonable level of due diligence and planning, cloud solutions can overcome any security concerns.

Next Post in the Series: Moving to the Cloud: Cost Savings

Microsoft’s Apology Says Volumes about Office 365 Outages

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It should be no secret that Microsoft’s Office 365 service continues to experience the types and frequency of outages that plagued its predecessor cloud service, BPOS.  While the outages receive little press coverage (they are frequent enough that they are not newsworthy?) , customers feel the impact.

In response to outages on Nov 8 and Nov 13, Microsoft sent customers a formal letter of apology (read it here).

Most disturbing to Office 365 customers is what Microsoft’s apology says about the quality and capabilities of Microsoft and the Office 365 platform.

With respect to the Nov 8th outage, Microsoft states the following:

“Office 365 utilizes multiple anti-virus engines to identify and clean virus messages from our customers’ inboxes. Going forward, we have built and implemented better recovery tools that allow us to remediate these situations much faster, and we are also adding some additional architectural safeguards that automatically remediate issues of this general nature.”

What this says is that, at times, significant virus traffic makes it to the email servers, and Microsoft has technology to remediate this problem by scanning servers and removing these messages from inboxes.  This is troublesome for a few reasons:

  • Best practice is to prevent viruses from reaching email servers, as any inbox remediation system allows the possibility that a virus is activated by a user before being cleaned.
  • Remediation of this problem has been manually driven and that automating the process is still in development
  • Remediation of virus infections dramatically impacts performance, up to the level of an outage.
  • Microsoft has not yet built an infrastructure that is capable of preventing virus infections, and continues to be focused on remediation.

With respect to the Nov 13th outage, Microsoft states:

“This service incident resulted from a combination of issues related to maintenance, network element failures, and increased load on the service.”

Microsoft acknowledges that they perform maintenance that can interrupt customer services outside of maintenance windows and that the Office 365 architecture lacks sufficient redundancy.  Microsoft is also admitting that the Office 365 infrastructure does not have sufficient capacity to handle peak demand loads and does not allow for automatic activation and allocation of resources based on demand.

In response to these outages, Microsoft promises the following:

“Significant capacity increases are already underway and we are also adding automated handling on these type of failures to speed recovery time.”

In essence, Microsoft cannot  predict or manage capacity, so they are throwing resources at the problem.   More importantly, Microsoft is not fixing the architecture in order to prevent load-based failures — they are automating how they respond to failures.

In other words:  Microsoft expects future Office 365 outages;  So, too, should Office 365 customers.

 

CFO Research Report: The Business Value of Cloud Computing

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In May 2012, CFO Research conducted a survey among senior finance executives at large U.S. companies to examine their views on the business value of cloud computing, as well as their plans and priorities for adopting cloud-based systems in the years ahead.  This report presents the findings from interviews with 310 financial executives across 15 industries.

Reading this report, you will learn:

  • Key motivators driving the move to cloud computing
  • How CFOs view the business advantages of cloud computing
  • How real experiences with cloud computing compare with expectations
  • Which factors CFOs see as the greatest barriers to cloud adoption
  • The role of employee performance in cloud computing decisions

Where is Your Cloud Bandwidth Bottleneck?

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When speaking with companies and schools about moving to cloud solutions like Google Apps and Google Cloud Storage, we are often asked about bandwidth demands.  Many organizations worry that their current Internet connections are not sufficient for cloud computing.  While most organizations already have more than enough Internet bandwidth, they may still have performance bottlenecks from their internal network.

Many small and mid-size enterprises make infrastructure decisions, electing to save money with consumer grade and so-called “SMB” products.  In many instances, these products are not designed to handle business traffic.

WiFi Access Points: Low-end WiFi Access Points, or WAPs, are not designed for a large number, or large traffic, connections.  While these devices claim they can support dozens of devices, the reality is that their antennae systems, channel management, and software are not up  to the task.  These devices can bog down with collisions, reducing the effective bandwidth to near zero with as few as 5 or 10 active users.

Switches and Hubs: The same load considerations exist for low-end switches and hubs, particularly those with slower back-planes and less memory.  Traffic bursts can overload these devices, creating “collisions” that slow down your network.

Routers: Many entry level and SMB routers do not have the processor or back-plane speed needed to meet the traffic demands for today’s network.  The router between your network and the Internet needs to be fast, with the ability to buffer traffic, and provide network services.  While changing to cloud solutions may not dramatically alter the amount of traffic, it changes the pattern.  An underpowered router can slow traffic like a broken toll booth gate.

For most small and mid-size businesses, network performance planning for cloud solutions should start at the ends and work towards the middle.  Look at your Direct Internet Access capacity and your WiFi and move inwards to the router, hubs, and switches.  A well planned network will improve performance, reliability, and productivity.

 

 

3 Non-IT Benefits of Google Apps

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When most companies consider moving to cloud computing solutions, in general, and Google Apps, in particular, the decision making process is often IT-centric.  Decision makers focus on the features, cost, and impact of the change.

While not surprising, the decision should really be business-centric.

What value will moving to Google-Apps bring to the business, beyond the direct impact on IT?

In a recent Executive Briefing, we presented answers based on a formal study of more than 100 companies that switched to Google Apps for Business.  Here are three of the highlights:

1) Individual worker productivity gains of 5% to 25%

2) Sales increases of 1% to 4%

3) Travel expenses drop by 5% to 18%

While features, reliability, and cost are all reasons to look at changing technologies, the business benefits should guide the decision process.