Cloud Computing is one of the most discussed and propitious IT innovations of the current technological market. It is very attractive for businesses thanks to the potential it brings, especially with regard to cost savings and increased efficiency. More and more companies have started to realize the many benefits of the cloud especially due to the current pandemic.
Cloud computing is fast emerging as an innovative and consumer-driven advantage that is drawing exceptional attention from enterprises, tech innovators, and also the ‘connected’ public at large. The transition from information technology, to a more assertive focus on business development, moreover reinforces the predicament for cloud adoption. This is why enterprises, both big and small, need to apprehend the potential of the cloud and thoroughly exploit this impressive technological advance.
There are two types of cloud models:
Service models are classified based on the different services provided by the cloud, whereas deployment models are categorized based on how and by whom the cloud services are used.
The Cloud Service Models are mainly classified into 3 types:
Deployment models include:
The Cloud Computing IT benefits for enterprises and organizations include:
The Evolution Of Cloud Technology
In the early 1970s, IBM came up with an innovative operating system (OS) named VM. This allowed for the simultaneous operation of more than one OS. Guest operating systems can be operated on every VM, with memory and other infrastructure, therefore making it feasible to share these resources. This evolved as the concept of virtualization in computing which has become popular. In the 1990s, telecom operators implemented the virtualized private network connections, which were offered a very good quality of service with point-to-point (dedicated) services at a very lesser cost. This technology has helped telecom companies to offer shared services to many users with a single physical infrastructure. This virtualization, in turn, led to Grid computing, which allowed major issues to be addressed via parallel computing; utility computing facilitated computing resources to be offered as a metered service and SaaS allowed subscriptions.
What Are The Different Cloud Models?
After addressing the issues with Grid computing, cloud computing has emerged with these factors. The three different cloud service models for businesses are
As mentioned in the beginning, cloud networks are classified into four types: public, private, community, and hybrid. Through a public cloud, the service provider can offer storage and applications to any user or consumer via the Internet. These services can be implemented freely or charged on a pay-per-usage process. Public cloud services are much simpler to install and less expensive, as the expenses for bandwidth and application are covered by the provider. They are scalable, and the consumers can only access those services that they use and pay for.
A private cloud is also referred to as an internal cloud or corporate cloud because it provides a proprietary computing architecture. Therefore, this enables only a restricted number of users protected by a firewall to access the hosted services. Private clouds are used by businesses that require them to exercise more control over their data. As far as the community cloud is concerned, it is a resource mutually shared by more than one organization or enterprise whose cloud needs have common requirements.
The hybrid cloud is a combination of two or more different clouds. Here, the clouds used can be a combination of private, public, or community. Cloud computing is promptly being embraced by mobile device users too, although there are limitations, such as battery life, storage capacity, and restricted processing power. Some of the most popular cloud applications are Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google compute engine, and IBM CloudManaged Services. These cloud services have considerably helped small and medium businesses (SMBs) to be on par with large multinational companies.
The development of 4G, Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (Wimax), is also mounting up the connectivity of mobile devices. Moreover, new technologies for mobile, such as CSS3, Hypertext Markup Language (HTML5) hypervisor for mobile devices, Web 4.0, etc. will significantly empower the adoption of mobile cloud computing.
How Business Models Increase Enterprise Efficiency During COVID-19?
The COVID-19 crises presented a serious threat to businesses, people, and economies across the globe. It was a wake-up call that the unexpected and the unlikely are more tangible and plausible than anyone previously anticipated. For many, it has been a bitter reality: painful, costly, still unresolved, while for others, it has presented an unforeseen windfall; one that organizations have strived to capitalize on. Business executives and decision-makers must accept that the pandemic-induced variations in operations, strategy, management, and budgetary priorities are here to stay. There has been an accelerated investment coming in through digital tech mainly through virtualization, contactless payments, and cloud adoption. Well-architected maintained and updated cloud services are implemented to handle the unexpected spikes in demand.
Among its other benefits, cloud computing architecture can also help to ensure that financial institutions and the critical functions they perform are resilient to disruption (keep their level of availability) whatever the cause. Cloud is a fundamental component for continuity of services and acts as an efficient failover during a crisis or operational disruption. It is the most significant part of the architecture for overcoming these difficulties and ensuring comprehensive execution.
Redundancy: A Major Benefit Of The Cloud
Data or other operations can be duplicated across domains without endangering the extent of service, hence, enabling redundancy without impact on latency. Other than that, dependencies and calling patterns among different domains are asynchronous and ring-fenced with security mechanisms, providing redundancy configurations at a scale and cost that were not earlier possible.
Cloud Is Elastic And Scalable In Nature
Flexibility and scalability are the key features of cloud architecture that allows firms to adapt to market conditions very rapidly and efficiently. In a COVID-19 situation, the most relevant benefit of this is the ability to scale up automatically without physical on-site presence, adding servers to process peaks to minimize service disruption or outage. For example, Google Cloud’s Burst Capacity Solution provides additional compute and analytics capabilities that can handle some of the most compute-intensive workloads. This sort of solution can help financial institutions (FI) quickly glean more from data, virtualize productivity tools, and scale up and out hundreds of cores and terabytes of memory. The ultimate aim is to make sure that FIs infrastructure can control crucial traffic spikes and maintain the most demanding workloads efficiently, securely, and at scale.
The Adaptation To Remote Working
One of the most transformational impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on most organizations is related to a fundamental change in the day-to-day activity, where the new normal is characterized by transitioning to a remote workplace environment. This has a huge impact on the way employees conduct their daily activity from the cultural perspective (as they need to adapt a completely different relationship model), but also from the technology perspective as this new situation needs a much bigger bandwidth allowing the capacity to undertake their activity in the new environment. This challenge has been taken as a positive impact of the pandemic as technology has demonstrated to be elastic and resilient enough and employees are adapting rapidly to the new environment.
Make Sure Customer Requirements Are Always Met With Remote Servicing
Another angle to look at the new environment in which teams within organizations are working is on how they are providing services to customers. In an industry immersed in a fast digitization process, it is also fair to recognize that the traditional contact with customers takes place mainly through physical channels, and even currently around 40% of existing consumers still use manned channels, mostly branch or call center. So the COVID-19 pandemic has staged a substantial challenge from the servicing perspective, to be able to avoid any disruption. Therefore, several organizations have been able to depend on cloud-enabled virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) to make sure that branch staff and call center agents were able to maintain the level of service with customers, being able to deploy most of their daily activities in a remote environment.
In conclusion, COVID-19 has shown how demonstrably important data connectivity is in managing global challenges, and therefore the importance of the cloud in enabling remote data access and storage has become even more conclusive. It has emphasized the need for companies to embrace digital business models—and only cloud platforms can implement the innovation, scalability, and agility required for this transition. Although there have been challenges and misleading origins in the enterprise migration to the cloud, enterprises can choose the right service models to significantly accelerate their progress. Enterprises can also reduce the threat of competition by focusing investments on where they will provide the most business value and by building cloud-ready operating models.
