It’s all in the Cloud by Omar Bell
“It’s in the cloud”, the current buzz phrase in the world of technology, but what is the cloud how can it help your business?
In very broad terms, the primary use of computing technology in a business has been to collect and store large quantities of data. Once the data is collected it is manipulated to produce meaningful information which is then presented, generally in the form of reports and graphs to the people that need to consume it to make decisions.
Now to achieve this, a business traditionally had to purchase powerful computers called servers then stack and connect them in a dedicated room on their premises called a server room. The advantage of this “on premise” system is that after that initial expense to purchase and configure the equipment the business is free to use and repurpose these resources as it sees fit. The disadvantages however are that servers are costly and server rooms require dedicated power, air conditioning and trained staff to keep the servers running optimally. On premise solutions also have challenges if the business needs to quickly “scale up” (add new servers to meet new resource needs) as the servers would have to be ordered, built and shipped before they can be used. On premise also cannot handle temporary spikes in resource needs such as needing additional resources to produce an end of year consolidated report quickly or resources to beef up the point of sale system to deal with a two-day end of year sale. This would require the ability to scale up (add resources) and then scale down (discard resources) once they are no longer needed.
The cloud is meant to be the solution to these problems. A cloud is simply a collection of servers at a remote location that provide various services. So, instead of having an on premise server room a business can lease servers and resources from a cloud service provider. These services are accessed via the internet. The servers are bought and managed by the cloud provider. The business does not have to manage and maintain a server room and also does not have to involve itself in the maintenance of the servers themselves. Instead focus will be on the applications running of these servers that will provide the decision making information that is vital to the running of the business itself. Cloud customers benefit from economies for scale.
Omar Bell is our Lead Engineer – Cloud Services at tTech Limited. He can be contacted at 656-8479 or by email at omar.bell@ttech.com.jm.