Cloud Source

5 Considerations When Choosing a Cloud Vendor

by

Prioritizing cloud technology in your business planning is a great way to save costs, as well as improve productivity, agility, flexibility, and scalability. But knowing which cloud vendor will be the right partner in your cloud migration can be challenging. Bells and whistles abound, and you’ve probably heard many stories of migrations that stalled or were permanently shuttered due to a mismatch between the company and cloud vendor.

How do you avoid these obstacles and choose a cloud vendor that will be right for your needs? Here are five considerations to weigh when evaluating a cloud provider:

Price: The difficulty here is comparing apples to apples. Ask for more than just their pricing. Request copies of actual invoices distributed to companies of your similar size and scope and use them to get a more accurate estimate of what the cost of the cloud technology will be.

Most cloud providers offer a subscription-based pay model with no penalties for scaling up or down in users, but find out about hidden costs like retrieving data from cold storage.

Support: In addition to pricing, find out what kind of support you can expect from the cloud vendor. Is their offering designed to provide you with ongoing management and maintenance, or will you be on your own after the initial implementation? Talk to some of their clients to see if what’s promised matches with what is delivered. Examine the service level agreement carefully to determine what the impact on your company would be if the cloud provider went out of business or decided to stop supporting the particular technology you are considering.

Security: A cloud provider often has a more robust security strategy than anything you could support in-house, but take the time to understand what their policies cover. Ultimately, the data is yours and you will feel the impact if there is a breach, so make sure the provider you choose has policies that align well with yours. Find out how security responsibilities will be split, particularly for data in transit.

Features: A clearly-defined needs assessment should be in place before you begin examining what a cloud vendor has to offer. This helps your company avoid being swayed by flashy sales presentations that present impressive features that add nothing to your bottom line. If you have clear goals associated with your cloud migration, it will be easier to assess what solution will help you meet those goals and ignore those that won’t.

Portability: Be on the alert for cloud vendors that are selling in-house deployment or ongoing management solutions that end up locking you into technology that won’t grow with you. Look for solutions that offer open-source tools and open application programming interfaces (APIs) that are flexible for growth and innovation.

Reliability and Performance: While these are distinct measures, the end result is the same: end users are never seeing a hiccup. Look for a cloud provider that offers 99.99% uptime and ask for documentation that backs it up. Calculate the cost of the average downtime the cloud vendor cites and determine whether you can support the loss.

Choosing a cloud vendor is like any other purchase: it’s better with a knowledgeable guide. Contact us at Cloud Source for assistance in choosing a provider that meets your needs in terms of features but also in areas like security and reliability. We can help you leverage the technology that moves your company forward.

Two Ways Cloud Computing Is Easing Adoption Hurdles

by

There’s no doubt that cloud computing got a significant increase in momentum from the pandemic. What had been in motion or on the radar for many companies prior to 2020, suddenly became a priority. Investing in cloud solutions allowed for uninterrupted work that also provided consistent work experiences, regardless of the location.

Now that the pandemic’s impact can be examined from a broader perspective, the usefulness of cloud computing has not faded. Companies are permanently embracing hybrid and remote work environments and the efficiency, cost savings, flexibility and productivity improvements experienced with cloud solutions make it a good choice for the long term.

When considering the benefits that cloud computing could deliver to your business, there are two primary ways in which the technology is continually improving performance:

True Multicloud Environments: In the early days of cloud adoption, companies often chose between a public or private cloud solution. While private cloud solutions delivered ultimate control and better privacy for sensitive information, public cloud solutions offered faster innovation and lower costs. In many situations, based on workload needs and budgets, companies assigned certain business processes to cloud solutions and kept others in-house.

Hybrid cloud environments soon became a common choice, with both public and private cloud as well as in-house solutions being combined to deliver optimal cost savings and performance. Companies using hybrid environments have often struggled to manage resources and policy across different types of cloud and in-house solutions, but management tools emerged to remove some of those obstacles.

Today, companies are utilizing innovative management solutions that allow for a true multicloud environment. Workloads can be strategically assigned across multiple cloud providers to optimize every aspect of cloud computing. Management solutions are designed not only for handling workloads and policy but also for aspects such as provider contracts and terms.

Edge Computing: Another expanding trend that is broadening the application of cloud computing for businesses is edge computing. Rather than a centralized data center, computing happens closer to where data is created and accessed in a distributed model.

Edge computing offers some key benefits that are directly applicable to companies that have geographically-dispersed teams or remote and mobile teams. The most important benefit is the improvement of application performance through the reduction of latency. Data is no longer traveling to and from a data center; it’s all processed and accessed near where it is needed.

Edge computing also opens up new opportunities around how security is handled, using secure edge strategies to protect data and devices.

If your company has been investing in cloud computing, you’re likely eyeing your next move. Cloud computing offers expanding benefits as you migrate more of your operations to cloud solutions, but leveraging the right technology requires an informed guide. Contact us at Cloud Source for unbiased assistance in choosing the right cloud-forward technology.

Cloud Security Best Practices: Staying Proactive Reduces Risks

by

There is plenty to be wary of today as cyber criminals develop craftier and more invasive techniques for accessing corporate resources. And with more organizations moving deeper into digital transformation, there are more targets. Cloud security has become a hot topic, and for good reason.

While cloud-based technologies help organizations in many industries find more productive ways of doing business while staying connected more effectively, the complexities inherent to the cloud environment invite new complications where cloud security is concerned. In fact, there is an often-cited lack of visibility that creates mistrust for many companies, as they feel vulnerable to attack and have no way to proactively protect themselves. Rather, they take a reactive approach that is a “too little too late” strategy.

One of the barriers to better protection is the workflow disturbance that comes with putting in new protections. When cloud security experts recommend a solution that even hints at disrupting workflow, there is a ton of pushback that leads to vulnerabilities in the long run. Fortunately, there are options out there today that allow organizations to stay safe and productive simultaneously.

Adding Protection

Cyber security experts can agree on a number of points in following cloud security best practices, the first of which is to build a solution that fits today’s needs while offering a means for addressing future needs. This means partnering with solution providers that can help you scale up or down as needed.

Many organizations are finding a need to adopt a multi-cloud environment, which is also a good reason for adopting solutions that are scalable.

Managing Complexities

Cyber security is a complex situation, but another best practice that cyber security experts agree upon is that integrated security can help to reduce the complexities normally found in these environments. For example, the best solutions offer workload protection that is cloud based, but the solution is also offered as a unified package rather than managing multiple disparate tools.

At Cloud Source, we offer technology lifecycle management that puts our clients ahead of the cyber criminals. We know that IT departments often struggle to find the solutions that work for their specific needs and that’s where we come in. Rather than your company being tasked with searching hundreds of vendors for technology that fits you, we do all the research and find the exact solutions you need. We’re the trusted advisor that can guide you through comprehensive project management, so contact us and let’s talk about giving your cloud security a boost.

The Benefits of Combining SD-WAN and 5G

by

The ability to better manage connectivity and performance for cloud-focused IT environments drove adoption of software-defined wide area networking (SD-WAN). With improved visibility, network segmentation, and the ability to choose from a variety of pathways, SD-WAN addressed concerns around bandwidth demand and cloud application performance.

Now, with the availability of 5G coming to fruition, companies experience data services that are even faster than some wired WAN options like multiprotocol label switching (MPLS). The benefits of 5G, including low latency and speeds exceeding 1GB, allow for better performance than comparable wired options.

5G also delivers speeds over 150 Mbps, equipping most branch offices with the performance levels they need. This is only expected to increase, exceeding 1GB with very low latency, and equipping wireless capacity for branch WAN.

But 5G is still early in its deployment, and many of the benefits have only been enjoyed in some metro areas. Also, 5G network slicing, offering guaranteed quality of service, is only available in certain U.S. cities.

SD-WAN and 5G Working Together: When used in combination, SD-WAN and 5G create a new WAN architecture that offers important benefits to employers of large hybrid or work-from-home teams. SD-WAN and 5G combined offer high-speed bandwidth, better reliability, and rapid provisioning.

IT teams are introduced to new wireless service providers equipped to replace their wired alternatives. Many companies with branch locations already utilize LTE to promote reliability and high availability to avoid downtime, which can be essential features for pop-ups and temporary branch locations.

The combination is also useful in cases where work-from-home employees require a secondary network access with high application performance requirements.

Multiplying Benefits: More companies are making SD-WAN their standard infrastructure upgrade when trying to segment traffic across multiple WAN links. It offers better link security as well as improved reliability and performance to create a cost-efficient path to greater bandwidth capacity. 5G links add additional benefits because they are simple, efficient for provisioning, and offer link diversity as a guard against downtime. 5G is a cableless option that is easy to purchase and deploy.

Some of the most powerful benefits of combining 5G and SD-WAN include:

  • Link redundancy and quality of service
  • Easier link provisioning
  • Improved application performance
  • Better visibility, security, and traffic segmentation
  • Connectivity diversity
  • Support for edge devices
  • Cost-efficiency

The large number of employees working from home in either permanently remote or hybrid situations is increasing the demand for 5G, and this type of work environment is expected to remain long after the pandemic has faded. 5G and SD-WAN make ideal partners either as a replacement for the primary delivery of broadband or as a way to complement services and create redundancy and quality of service.

When it’s time for a network infrastructure upgrade, your organization may be considering circumstances like remote and work-from-home employees. Contact us at Cloud Source where we understand the many factors influencing your technology decisions and are ready to guide you in considering how SD-WAN and 5G may play a role.

Will Mobility Change the Desktop?

by

There have been a lot of predictions made about the desktop, especially in light of the ways mobility is driving changes in technology. More calls are being handled on cell phones and other portable devices.

While mobility is definitely impacting technology development, there’s one advantage a desktop has that mobile devices can’t duplicate: real estate. Even the largest cell phones can’t match a desktop screen size, and while tablets get closer, they are still much smaller than desktop screens.

There are a couple of reasons screen size matters. First, for some segments of the workforce, seeing detailed information or small text can be a challenge on a mobile device. Second, many workers struggle to type effectively on a mobile device versus the speed and accuracy rates they can reach on a desktop.

Meanwhile, desktop screens have only become bigger and brighter. The 15-inch screens of 25 years ago are dwarfed by the 27- and 32-inch screens populating desks today. Many workers also choose to use dual displays at their desks, making it almost impossible for a cell phone screen to compete. A large screen paired with a mouse or equipped with a touchscreen makes a desktop an indispensable tool. It’s expected that future desktop options will provide even more visual space.

The Possibility of Softphone Apps: One likely path to addressing the combination of the convenience of mobility with the visibility of the desktop is the desktop phone being replaced with softphone apps for both desktop and mobile options.

Today, desktop handsets already feature color screens, and some are large and allow more features for handling calls. But this tends to be a duplication of what can be done through a softphone app on the desktop.

A softphone app’s usefulness through mobility became more apparent during COVID-19 days, with many people working from home, and many permanently hybrid companies continue to utilize it. Remote workers need to have access to their phones, but it is impractical to bring work phones home to be plugged into less-secure, lower-performing home networks. Whether the network is WiFi or hard-wired, not everyone has 5G or fiber internet, creating latency and performance issues.

It is suspected that handsets will be phased out as duplicate hardware. The integration of mobile technology with the desktop will drive the use of a softphone app that can function identically and consistently on the desktop computer screen as well as the cell phone screen. It will also eliminate the need to have a handset moving from office to home to equip remote work.

You can also expect that softphone apps will continue to evolve, leveraging the option of expansive desktop screens for additional features and sophistication. Features like video conferencing and shared workspaces will make the desktop an integral part of mobility-focused work.

If your company is considering a communications technology upgrade, contact us at Cloud Source for guidance in choosing future-proof solutions that will equip your organization for growth.

Contact

328 S. Jefferson St. Suite 603
Chicago, IL 60661
Ph: 312.753.7880
E: info@CloudSourceServices.com

Newsletter Signup

Stay up-to-date on Cloud Source's news.

↑ Top of Page