How to Make Cloud Computing Work For You

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...hyperbole around it that has the potential to distract businesses from making the critical decisions needed to plan, design and effectively deploy what's needed to reap the potential benefits.

Gartner recognises the following areas of risk as key to assess for any cloud move: data integrity, recovery, and privacy, and an evaluation of legal issues in areas such as e-discovery, regulatory compliance, and auditing. The potential and impact of some of these have only been too well illustrated by the recent Wikileaks controversy with Amazon stopping their service, plus the recent Microsoft revelation that US authorities have the...

...right to access any cloud stored data, even if that data resides within the EU.

As a fully managed service understanding these risks in terms of likelihood and impact in the context of your enterprise is a key starting step. Do the pros outweigh the cons? Or vice versa? Only then are you going to be able to mitigate and address the risks and issues that are likely to accompany the delivery phase of your strategic vision.

Understand what you want (and what you’ve got)
If you’re looking to get from A to B to achieve your IT strategy, it’s important that you understand where A is. Asking the right questions requires a good hard look at the key ingredients to any cloud solution such as your data centre requirements, your network, your business processes and your people. For example, for those keen to take the leap to cloud on an enterprise wide level (think junking the desktop), then consolidating and securing your data centres should be an important first step if yours are scattered liberally across the globe. If your network performance is poor, ensuring you’ve got access via bigger pipes and that you’ve optimised your network may be where you need to... continued on page three >

 

 

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