I am very fortunate to work in an industry that has grown rapidly and changes all the time. We learn of new possibilities, new technologies and new approaches to what we do every day. For someone that loves technology this is wonderful.
One of the things that we spend a lot of time considering and discussing with our customers is the cloud, and I have to admit that this is an area that I find fascinating and find myself thinking about more and more.
Just take a look at the cloud, this brave new world of computing.
Powerful medical reporting is carried out 'in there', Apple wants to start serving media over it, and soon the OnLive gaming service will launch on it. Like in a British weather report, there are a lot of clouds on our horizon.
Recently I had the fortune to attend a presentation about the cloud and virtualisation. It was interesting to me, since it applies to our business and there were a number of very large organisations there that were happy to discuss the benefits and the problems associated with their new systems, but the more I think about the 'average' use of the cloud the more I think it must confuse those firms that are still on the ground looking up.
Where do you even begin with the cloud? If you read the technical papers you see a lot of mixed messages. The cloud is secure, the cloud is not as secure as your traditional systems, it’s difficult to monitor or police, and it involves surrendering control over what can be very significant parts of your business to another company that you have very little to deal with.
Put yourself in the position of the person within a company that is trying to encourage the CEO or CFO that the cloud is a good way to go.
You tell him the benefits and it raises an interested eyebrow, but then you mention the possible negatives, and the eyebrows furrow. This is not a good way to end a meeting. Nor is it a good way to start a new technological investment.
Unfortunately those organisations considering a cloud solution do not always receive the right assistance when searching for the right system for them, which of course is just as important as the technological benefits it is intended to provide. Because of its very nature the cloud is intangible, and many of the organisations known for providing it do not offer the support that I think their customers need. They should be guiding and providing, but I do not think that this is always the case.
Consider this situation. You deal with a lot of media on a daily basis, or your website performs large volumes of transactions. You find that you need a lot of processing power and you need someone to provide it for you. Rather than invest in super servers that will only be used occasionally, many firms will choose to go to someone like Amazon for its EC2 option, a provider that offers a lot of CPU when you want it. But on who's terms are they getting this power, and how much real control and visibility do they have over it?
It's not every customer that can walk into a company like Amazon and discuss their personal hosting issues, hammer out a support contract and return to their office safe in the knowledge that they have a partner.
But that is what you need for your online business, a partner not a provider. I think a lot of 'providers' are forgetting that and as a result are not serving the middle market.
The new hosting behemoths like Amazon will work hard to please a large, big name, customer, but the average client will actually have very little to do with it. This, I believe, does neither side any favours.
Careful thought needs to be given to selecting a cloud provider as it is likely they will operate in a very different way to your hosting provider of the last 5 or even 10 years. Any time that a firm believes it will save is often lost as they strive to understand any platform specific requirements and IT environment of their new provider, in some cases customers have had to re-engineer their systems, just to meet those of the person who is supposed to be working for them, or at the very least, with them.
If you consider that, it is really at odds with most business relationships. I find it doesn’t compute, if you will forgive the pun.
A major concern to some firms will be the payment options available at your average cloud provider. There is no paper trail, no informed discussion, and agreements are made via the browser. There is hardly a physical handshake in sight. How many firms, or IT managers, would baulk at the idea of explaining that they had paid a firm a fairly significant sum to perform an important business function using a credit card? Yet incredibly this is often what they have to do.
This cannot instil confidence in financial departments, who will be concerned about such inflexibility, not to mention the difficulty in controlling and predicting costs – a situation that will be incredibly unpopular amongst number crunchers everywhere, a major hurdle in its future appeal to many companies.
As it is difficult to benefit from something you cannot control, the average cloud instance will not work for some companies, and sadly, it is those companies that could most benefit from it. Many of the people I speak to, both on a personal and professional level, admit that they have tried the cloud, some with great success and some merely as a taster which has led to them walking away from it. You would think that those walking away would have had their eyes opened to a new way of doing things, but instead they are left with the impression that it is not for them, not now, but perhaps in a few years’ time.
We all have to keep on top of the security issues in our industry, and it is something that often comes up in talks I have with clients. According to Symantec it is a major and ongoing concern for many companies. In a recent report, the security firm warned that one third of IT managers - those people who would be behind any cloud investment, think that moving into the cloud will impact on the integrity of their systems, in a very negative way.
Perhaps even more concerning is that forty percent, that were using cloud computing for hosting applications, were concerned about not only the risk of data loss that might present itself, but also about their ability to react to problems.
Virtualisation and cloud server hosting technologies bring opportunities and threats. A managed approach to this type of hosting is therefore crucially important at this moment in time.
What we must remember is that the cloud is here, the power is available, and it is incredibly beneficial. Companies should not avoid it, they should embrace it.
But they should embrace it on their terms, not someone else's, and with complete confidence.
Michael Hassan
Product Manager
Managed Hosting NetBenefit