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2020 has been a challenging year for the entire world, in more ways than I can list. On top of our personal and social lives being thrown into upheaval, there have been dramatic changes in the way everyone is doing business. People are moving away from work in central offices, whenever and wherever possible. While some organizations were well equipped to transition to remote work, others have only begun their frantic initiatives to enable remote work for their staff.
One of the strongest ways to enable this move to remote work environments is through the adoption of cloud technologies. But what are the real forces that make cloud the strongest play for these companies? What specific components of cloud computing make it so attractive?
Let's dive into the different risks that organizations are facing these days and how cloud computing helps minimize them.
Most organizations have traditionally had some basic capability to allow certain employees to work remote. For instance, it is not uncommon for sales or accounting teams, who are equipped with laptops, to be able to work from home, or even at their local coffee shop while out-of-office to meet clients. They connect to the office via VPN. Or, they have copies of data that they need, and are able to email or copy that data to shared drives once they come back to the office.
What about all of the other staff? There are still many individuals with desktop PCs set up to do tasks from their cubicle desk in a physical office. In the event that they cannot physically access that desktop PC for something as simple as a sick day (or something as serious as a pandemic quarantine), how can you expect to keep these employees productive?
More than just desktops, entire on-premise infrastructure operations could be at risk. As an example, in 2012 Hurricane Sandy caused the flooding of the basements in New York City, causing the complete loss of power for days to entire blocks of buildings. In unexpected situations like these, are you prepared to overcome local servers being inaccessible or unreachable?
To insulate you against these risks, you need to consider moving all or parts of your server resources or infrastructure operations into managed cloud or colocation hosting services delivered from secure data center facilities. In addition to being designed with multiple security and operational redundancies for maximum available uptime, these data center facilities are classified as essential businesses. This means that, in addition to physical hardware safeguards to keep customer services running, these facilities will continue to be staffed by real people day and night to manage those services and address any troubleshooting issues. This removes the concern of sending your own staffing into potentially hazardous environments to keep your organizational operations running.
Your office may be an incredible place to work. It may offer scenic views, great proximity to key clients, and a host of other amenities and comforts. But when it comes to that infrastructure engine driving the technology in your office, there is no comparison to the power, cooling, and network connectivity offered from a purpose-built data center that serves as the foundation for cloud services.
Relying solely on a data center closet or other on-premise can create inherent risk around power and network connectivity. As an example, inadequate cooling or venting for equipment in closets can lead to overheating servers in the summer and possible permanent damage to those machines. If you lose power or network connectivity to your on-premise machines, your productivity to both onsite and remote workers is lost.
This is where cloud services hosted within a purpose-built data center can truly out-perform an on-premise data closet. Top tier data centers, such as the flagship data center from Steadfast at 350 E. Cermak in Chicago, Illinois were designed and built with one goal in mind...uptime resiliency. This is validated by a Tier III rating that requires compliance with several minimum base standards for power availability, cooling standards, and redundant networking.
This Steadfast data center has redundant power brought into the building via multiple locations, with appropriate backup power generators on stand-by, power conditioning, and contracts with multiple vendors to provide fuel in the unlikely circumstances that a power grid becomes unavailable for days or weeks. The cooling systems provided in this data center are overbuilt to ensure that the ideal temperature and humidity for computing equipment is constantly maintained throughout the facility. And, the Steadfast network backbone, which is composed of a blend of four different high capacity providers, is brought into the facility in two different locations to ensure that network connectivity is never interrupted.
Technology is quickly expanding and will become increasingly critical to keeping your organization running effectively. This can create new opportunities. But it can also present new decisions that will need to be made about how you balance IT needs and staffing.
If you have internal IT staff, you want to keep them feeling happy and valued. But their roles may need to change. Their focus may turn to more strategic initiatives, such as the development of tools that will allow your staff to better work from home. Less of their time and efforts will be spent on “IT Housekeeping” items like system and server patch management, core infrastructure upgrades, and all of the mundane tasks they do behind the scenes that are not exciting but critical to operations.
If you have an external Managed Services Provider (MSP), it’s likely they will become increasingly important in your efforts to leverage new technologies. But keeping MSP costs generally entails minimizing project and job interactions, which means that you need to keep your infrastructure in proper order and stabilized as much as possible.
Leveraging cloud technologies can help with both of these issues...and in a relatively easy way. Strong cloud providers won’t just provide computing resources. They’ll have available staff that can help maintain the systems they host for you as a part of their service. This takes a lot of that mundane (or costly) work off of your shoulders and allows your IT staff or MSP resources to work on those strategic projects that will help advance the company, not just maintain it.
One of the biggest fears that companies have about moving to the cloud is being able to secure data so that employees and customers can access what they need while keeping potential intruders out. As news about data breaches have become commonplace, individuals have come to believe there really is no way to protect your data. Yet, while data breaches make big news, the truth is that a majority of organizations actually protect their data very well.
They do this by thoughtfully organizing data in their organization and having strong tools and utilities to protect them. Network firewalls, routing rules, smart switches, server firewalls, PC antivirus are all components of a strong security strategy.
Typically, however, small to mid-sized organizations do not have the financial capital to invest in proper security tools to fully protect their organizations. Additionally, it is generally cost-prohibitive for these organizations to also hire and employ full-time IT staff with the expertise to deploy and maintain these security tools.
Why sustain the time and expense to recruit, staff, and continuously maintain training and certifications for this security expertise for your staff on your own? The right cloud services provider can help you leverage a deep bench of their IT resources to minimize any additional investment. Best of all, service backed up by a solid service level agreement (SLA) ensures you even more peace of mind that your security is and will be maintained or compensated in the event of any issues.
We have addressed some of the common risks and benefits of moving some or all of your technology assets and workflows to the cloud. And maybe you’re convinced it’s time to take that step. But, moving to the cloud isn’t something you can flip a switch on and expect to work.
In fact, organizations that have rushed into cloud services without a plan have regretted it, spending money and time on a solution that wasn’t working. Organizations that successfully move to the cloud are deliberate about their intentions, define their needs honestly and work with partners that build a solution that matches those needs closely.
Let’s look at the bare minimum requirements and considerations that organizations should have in place to successfully execute a migration to the cloud.
Cloud services can bring a great deal of benefit to your organization. They can help you with a remote work strategy, minimize risks of downtime and availability issues for your workforce and ease up the workload on your IT resources. Implementing them properly requires a strategy to establish reasonable expectations and meeting them on a solid timetable. If you want to learn more about cloud implementation, or get some help with assessing your organization’s cloud strategy, please reach out to us here at Steadfast. We’re here to help and want to partner with you to help you Strengthen Your Focus.
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