Key Features of a Cloud Strategy

Every business benefits from a distinct cloud strategy which must be designed in keeping with the needs of the business. There is therefore no single cloud solution that can benefit all businesses equally. Below are provided some of the basic principles which should be included in every cloud strategy:

Software as a Service: The main aim of cloud solutions is user engagement and therefore the SaaS solutions must be innovative and respond to trends such as collaboration, mobility etc. This means that businesses will get to use the most recent cloud technologies when they sign up for cloud computing solutions from a provider. While user experience is of utmost importance, the user interface alone is not responsible for this. It is really the consistency which makes a difference. For instance, a visually attractive app may not offer a positive user experience when you try to use it for solving other business related issues. So, it is imperative to have multiple innovation cycles in a year to help you adapt to the changing conditions around you. Course correction is vital in a cloud strategy and before you sign up, you need to find out whether the solutions offered by your vendor are consistent across all platforms, whether you use desktop or mobile interface. You must also find out how information can be transferred to enable better collaboration, how often innovations are undertaken in a year, whether customers are involved in such innovations, whether they use analytics etc.

Platform as a Service: You cannot hope to deploy good applications without having good platforms. Since many vendors fail to appreciate the value of this idea initially, they end up having to make many changes later. It is important to have an open platform which can be adapted conveniently. You should be able to develop new solutions and build add-ons whenever needed. So, it is necessary to find out from your provider whether their cloud strategy supports only a single platform or it allows for the creation of new solutions too. You must find out what kind of innovations the platform offers such as in-memory, streaming, predictive analysis etc. The biggest risk when you adopt new cloud solutions is that customer experience can suffer when solutions from different providers are not able to integrate with one another seamlessly. So, there should be integration among solutions to lessen burden on users and consistency in user experiences. This implies there must be a consistent system of diagnostics or metrics which remains uniform across different platforms. So, you need to find out the kind of prepackaged integration the vendor offers, what the remedies are in case of problems with these, the people responsible for integrations and updates.

Infrastructure as a Service: Any cloud computing solution must be founded on a solid infrastructure. At the same time, it should be able to support diverse settings from various vendors. You will therefore need a set-up which can deploy cloud computing solutions, and at the same time easily shift existing applications into models of cloud computing when innovating. So, you must inquire which tools are available to virtualize the existing infrastructure, how the vendor can help you migrate your on-site apps to private clouds etc.

Security: This is perhaps the most important concern when discussing cloud hosting solutions. So, it is important to inquire about data location, business continuity and portability, backup solutions and disaster recovery plans offered by your provider. You need to know how the cloud vendor plans to “harden” the existing security structures, where it keeps the data, what its data center strategy is, the certifications it has relating to security etc.

Public Cloud: A public cloud is guaranteed to offer you cost efficiency by allowing resource-sharing amongst many servers interconnected in a network. Here, the vendor will own and run the infrastructure across the Internet. You will however need to find out whether the vendor is able to offer high scalability because at time, the configuration options are limited for each vendor. The vendor on its part is not always able to maintain a single code base and if forced to insert client-specific complexities into code line which in turn affects performance and delivery cycles. So, you have to ask how the vendor plans to handle multi-tenancy and whether it will use a hybrid approach or a custom one. You need to know how it will manage integration in diverse settings with its cloud plans.

Private Cloud: This is a great way to transfer the existing assets to a cloud solution. Here, the infrastructure will be run for one organization alone, whether it is internally managed or externally managed by third parties. You need to see how private clouds can benefit your business. The hybrid cloud is a combination of more than a single cloud model where both private and public cloud solutions are blended. This offers advantages of multiple cloud models but you need to ensure that your vendor knows exactly how to get the right mix. So, you have to ask your vendor what it can offer for transferring your existing solutions and how it will innovate these, how it will handle hybrid cloud settings and make the different cloud models integrate with one another etc.

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