To Cloud or not To Cloud, that is the question...

I attended the IPExpo at Earls Court the other week. There were clearly three trends: Virtualisation, Storage and Cloud. Virtualisation and storage are relatively easy to understand and recognise whether you need them or not, but the cloud is still a bit nebulous and can mean many different things to many different people.

As the CEO of a growing company, how do you know whether the cloud is a good idea or to be avoided right now? Whether to get in to the cloud or not is not an easy decision, it's a fundamental shift in technology strategy and philosophy. To get the right answer you need to thoroughly examine your company to see if it's ready for the cloud. Only if the company is ready will the benefits be fully realised.

Moving to the cloud when it's not appropriate could result in a costly failure.
My company, GreenBOLD have just released a short, easily readable, white paper giving some basic advice and some simple questions to ask yourself before you take your company's IT in to the cloud. It's downloadable here.

However, ahead of downloading it, three things you should think about are:

• Where's my data and who has access to it? Your data will be moving from the confines of your own environment to the custody of a third party. How comfortable does that make you feel? Data Protection means different things in different countries.
• What security is in place? Cloud solutions are accessed via the internet so you are wholly reliant on the third party's security systems to prevent anyone accessing your systems. Is that a situation you can manage?
• What would you do if access to your cloud solution suddenly failed? It's not impossible that the third party hosting company could go off line, whether it's a technical or financial disaster. In those circumstances what would you do? How would you recover?

The white paper has more questions that you should think about before you dive in to the cloud. Feel free to contact us to discuss your thoughts around the Cloud in more detail. GreenBOLD have experienced senior IT leaders who have implemented cloud-based solutions before and could help you make the right decision.