Moving a company’s digital infrastructure to the cloud is at once an old and new concept. Cloud computing has been around since the early 2000s, and many large enterprises have been enjoying the considerable benefits it offers at least since then.
Some businesses, however, still haven’t come around. For some reason or another, storing and processing on their own hardware gives them a sort of peace of mind. Many of these businesses are misguided; they don’t realize that cloudification means auto-scaling, cost reduction and easy management. In fact, cloud solutions are a path to super power any business.
One of the fundamental benefits of cloud computing is something most businesses have already been aware of for sometime: Not having to invest in on-site expensive servers to handle processing needs. Cutting down on the up-front costs of an investment that often over- or underperforms when it comes to actual needs is a reasonable thing to do, and it stimulates smart business growth.
But this capability goes beyond simply saving the cost to purchase and maintain a physical server: The real value is in the processing and computing flexibility cloud storage offers. It’s difficult for any business to know and forecast when there is going to be increased processing demand on its servers -- whether it’s an e-commerce brand preparing for major shopping events or services company in the aftermath of a major marketing push.
Whereas using owned hardware and servers leaves businesses vulnerable to overloading and crashing during these events, a business that has deployed its servers on the cloud has to worry a lot less about spikes in server demand. Even in the event of demand spikes that are unforeseen, having a digital network on the cloud gives any business a chance to broaden (or limit) the scope of its processing ability on the fly. It’s just a matter of adjusting a slider on a console. And no server space goes wasted.
Even when cloud computing is used on the most basic level, the capabilities are pretty amazing. For companies that have always used their own processing hardware, one of the most enticing things about the cloud is having the ability to “lift and shift”: In essence, cloudifying everything in one fell swoop.
It’s not as simple as it sounds; and yet it is the simplest and most basic way for companies to make the move to the cloud. Some businesses are wary by the prospect of transferring all of their digital information from a single server on premises to multiple “instances” (essentially, virtual servers on the cloud) and the perceived threats that come with it. But the reality is that a move to the cloud like this means improved reliability. Also, thanks to the “three 9s SLA” (99.9% availability time) of the cloud infrastructure it’s much easier to achieve the strictest SLAs required by enterprise customers. Shifting applications to the cloud frees you from infrastructure-induced unavailability incidents.
But again: “lift and shift” signifies the most basic level of cloudification. The true power of cloud computing comes when organizations take it a step further: going completely ‘cloud native.’ This means that applications and all digital processes either exist and originate on the cloud or are partly cloudified. It’s important to note that cloudification doesn’t stop apps from communicating with internal applications on premises.
Businesses that go cloud native can leverage the building blocks of the cloud such as database, caching and service execution, all provided as a service. Also, the cloud can become the new environment for all software development. Going cloud native presents considerable advantages: the cost of maintenance goes down, performance goes up, and communication between processes and applications becomes much smoother.
Furthermore, all updates that are needed can be made easily. Leveraging the cloud means that applications can be constructed with microservices: smaller building blocks which enable flexible updating and continuous development and deployment. Microservices, along with containers, make applications compartmentalized, so minor updates to an application no longer require a massive, global overhaul.
An important thing for any business to consider before any kind of transition to the cloud is what kinds of services and capabilities it would like to have in doing so. While the biggest names in cloud computing (AWS and Azure) offer significant capabilities to businesses uninitiated in cloud computing (such as providing the building blocks to go cloud native), these services operate on a significant level of complexity. For this reason, any business that is looking to super power itself by moving to the cloud would do well to link up with a partner who knows how to take them there swiftly and safely.