Cloud Source

Are Edge Computing and Cloud Computing the Same Thing?

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First, edge computing and cloud computing are not the same thing. They each deliver important benefits, and you may decide that one or both are technologies you would like to prioritize in the coming months or years. In order to reach an informed decision, take a look at the basic description of each and their different advantages:

Edge Computing: This technology equips your business with real-time data by moving analytics closer to where data is accessed and generated. The purpose is to reduce latency and improve connectivity, reducing the workload on servers and providing faster user access. Edge computing allows for the real-time identification of patterns and insights in your data more quickly than could occur with a traditional cloud service. It also optimizes bandwidth usage and lowers bandwidth transmission costs.

There are a few drawbacks, including the potential for higher infrastructure costs due to its need for dedicated resources. You also run the risk of lost data not only due to human error but also natural disasters. You also have a little risk from storing data at the edge rather than having multiple backup copies at a variety of locations. There’s also a lack of control over certain capacity-impacting processes, such as archiving, offloading and compressing.

Cloud Computing: A remote hosting service that allows your team to access applications over any internet connection, it eliminates in-house servers and scales easily for seasonality or as your business grows. There are many benefits to cloud computing, including getting the advantages of the provider’s innovation and hardware, as well as centralizing data. Employees can work from anywhere with an internet connection. There’s also essentially unlimited storage capacity as well as flexible pricing – structured in the form of a subscription invoicing model that is easily adjustable.

There are also some cons to cloud computing. The size of your business may cause cloud computing to be cost-prohibitive since cloud computing tends to make more sense for larger companies with massive data storage needs. When you use cloud computing, your data is stored and even managed off-site, limiting the amount of control you have over your data. While cloud computing providers invest heavily in security, your company may not decide that it is addressing your concerns about risk.

Is One Better Than the Other? Whether you should choose edge over cloud computing depends on your business priorities. Edge computing has a few limitations, being less flexible, less scalable, and less secure when compared with cloud computing. But there are also advantages. You might see a really high level of latency with a remote cloud system, and for companies with a high level of communication between data centers, edge computing tends to be better for sending messages.

There are pros and cons around both edge computing and cloud computing, but the best solution depends on your needs and priorities. You may want to consider how you can leverage each of these options to improve productivity and reduce costs.

The two technologies complement one another, each solving different challenges and providing coverage for the limitations of the other. You may want to ask not which computing method is a better IT strategy, but how you can use and maybe even combine the two in a way that delivers ultimate flexibility and efficiency.

To talk more about the best ways to combine edge computing and cloud computing for your business, contact us at Cloud Source. From business priorities to specific challenges you would like to solve, we can walk through various scenarios of how edge and cloud computing can be leveraged to meet your needs.

7 Cloud Computing Trends

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Technology has become a more complex topic for companies striving to survive the pandemic. IDC reports that there was significant cloud computing growth in 2021 and that the trajectory will continue in that direction for the remainder of 2022. Businesses looking for increased cost-efficiency and better business continuity protection are investing in cloud solutions. Here are seven cloud computing trends that you may decide need to be prioritized in your business this year:

SD-WAN: Software-defined wide area networking (SD-WAN) had been an important solution addressing the geographical dispersing of teams during the pandemic. As organizations shift to permanent work-from-home or hybrid plans, they are choosing to implement SD-WAN as a way to eliminate the need for employees to be on-site to access the network. In addition, SD-WAN unpairs management from the physical device, so administrators can work from anywhere.

Edge Computing: Companies are improving their efficiency by moving data storage and computing closer to where data is used and generated. The processing occurs on the edge of the network, which offers shorter response times and optimal bandwidth usage.

SASE: Secure access service edge (SASE) is a combination technology that utilizes SD-WAN paired with cloud-native security elements such as secure web gateways, firewall as a service and zero trust network access to achieve a comprehensively secure networking solution.

Artificial Intelligence Engineering: This support for AI projects ensures that companies are able to achieve full scale results with their projects, rather than getting stuck in proof-of-concept or prototype stages. AI engineering streamlines the execution and scalability of AI projects, elevating interpretability and trustworthiness. Companies are also using this technology to manage power, cooling systems, and network hardware to reduce the chances of a malfunction.

Unified Communications: One of the most disruptive technologies to emerge from cloud computing, unified communications is now powering remote and hybrid teams as they collaborate with colleagues and offer seamless customer experiences through cloud-based communications. From shared workspaces to audio and video conferencing options, this cloud solution allows organizations to optimize their connections and productivity.

Virtual Cloud Desktops: Organizations are finding that a virtual cloud desktop in which the entire workstation is delivered as a cloud service can eliminate the cost of hardware updates and eliminate redundant technology. Also known as desktop as a service, it separates the physical device from the desktop environment and applications. It offers benefits including synchronized technology and improved security.

Hybrid Cloud: One of the most critical cloud computing trends is the shift to a preference for hybrid cloud as a way to choose the elements of a cloud environment that suit the organization’s needs. As companies find that private and public cloud environments offer unique benefits in terms of security, flexibility, performance, compliance, and cost-efficiency, they want the freedom to assign workloads for maximum advantage.

These cloud computing trends may not all apply to your business needs, but for more information about how to prioritize them to benefit your company, contact us at Cloud Source.

Four Steps to a Successful Cloud Adoption Strategy

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As cloud adoption accelerates, many enterprises that pursue digital transformation strategies for the purposes of cost reduction, increased productivity, or enhanced customer experiences often find that the reality falls short of expectations. Unexpected obstacles during migration can cause unforeseen costs or delays that eliminate many of the benefits that were expected.

Planning ahead for obstacles and anticipating delays can help solidify your plans for moving to the cloud and deliver the desired benefits. To ensure a successful cloud adoption, consider implementing the following steps in your strategy:

Assess and Address Talent Shortages: Your enterprise IT team may be the rare example of one that’s overstaffed and looking for tasks, but in most cases, it’s likely that you’ll need to examine whether you have the skills in-house for a cloud adoption strategy. In the long run, a cloud investment is likely to lessen the load for your IT team, but you may find that you require additional skills or resources to fill some gaps.

Test Your Network: Cloud adoption tends to take a toll on your infrastructure and many enterprises determine the best path is a simultaneous infrastructure upgrade. Particularly in the case where a unified communications technology solution is being implemented, the burden on connectivity is so critical that you may need to address network speed and performance. There are free tests available to examine how bandwidth volume and other factors are impacting network performance.

Software-defined wide area networking (SD-WAN) is becoming a common approach to solving some of the network complexity introduced with a cloud environment. With a virtual overlay, this networking solution offers better visibility, as well as traffic segmentation and prioritization for better use of bandwidth resources.

Reduce Risks: Risk can come in many different forms in a cloud environment, but there are a couple of areas that require prioritized attention. Consider whether you may want to pursue a multi-cloud approach rather than a single cloud in order to optimize workload placement and avoid provider lock-in. A multi-cloud approach can also provide some failover for a more solid business continuity strategy.

In addition, while a cloud adoption strategy is no longer feared as an inherently unsafe pursuit, it will change and broaden your security plane. Think through how your provider’s security policies intersect with your own and the features you’ll need in place to protect your data and systems.

Develop Governance: Closely related to risk, governance will allow your enterprise to create policies around authorization and processes for cloud adoption. The ease with which applications and platforms can be accessed often creates problems around shadow IT and cloud sprawl. Determine which members of your IT team are authorized to spin up a new cloud solution and what the process is for line-of-business managers interested in utilizing new, cloud-based technology.

Cloud transitions will always come with a few surprises, and we specialize in anticipating and mitigating those challenges before they derail your strategy. Contact us at Cloud Source to develop an effective plan for your cloud adoption strategy.

Five Reasons DaaS Is the Ideal Solution for the Remote Workforce

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Remote work offers increased flexibility and reduces some overhead costs for enterprises, but it comes with some challenges, including communication gaps, new potential security vulnerabilities, and delayed IT support. Many enterprises are utilizing desktop as a service (DaaS) to support the remote workforce through a third-party provider.

DaaS offers the following five benefits to enterprise employees:

Accessibility: With a traditional desktop, the user must be physically present at the computer to access information; however, with a DaaS solution, a cloud-hosted virtual desktop can be accessed anywhere at any time. The virtual desktop is housed in a remote cloud server that can be utilized through any connected device. In addition, quality providers ensure 24/7 availability so that your desktop is always accessible. 

IT Relief: Not only does the managed services provider handle all the management and troubleshooting of the solution, but they also have provisions according to the fluctuating needs of the organization. You can scale users, random access memory (RAM), and storage up and down as necessary.

Improved Security: Your business data is under constant threat, and this threat is only increased by the vulnerabilities introduced with a remote workforce. A reliable DaaS provider offers enhanced security features to protect your data, including encryption, ransomware protection, multi-factor authorization and authentication, patching, antivirus solutions, and network monitoring. A good cloud service provider will also offer regular backups in addition to disaster recovery solutions that store files at geographically dispersed data centers.

Cost-Efficiency: Transitioning to a remote workforce can be costly, requiring the installation of individual systems, plus WiFi routers and software upgrades, plus the IT resources to troubleshoot any problems. DaaS removes the need for hardware investments, and the managed services team takes the pressure off enterprise IT. DaaS can be accessed on any connected device, so the enterprise does not need to make any significant hardware purchases to transition to remote work.

DaaS also enables enterprises to hire the best talent, regardless of geographical location, while reducing the cost associated with a new hire.

Better Collaboration: Remote teams are particularly challenged when it comes to collaborating on a project or attempting to finalize decisions in a timely manner. Sending emails back and forth can introduce confusion into the process, and each time a change is made to an attached file, it risks being lost in the email chain. With a DaaS solution, employees are able to work together in a shared platform. Team members can access and edit files in real time.

Supporting the remote workforce with DaaS also reduces the need for in-person meetings, as well as eliminating the associated travel costs. Teams are able to collaborate more with fewer resources invested.

To explore the possibilities of DaaS to equip your remote workforce, contact us at Cloud Source. You’ll need a guide along the way as you consider the needs of your organization and identify the best DaaS solutions available.

Five Challenges for Hybrid Cloud Management

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Enterprises enjoying the benefits of the cloud are diving in deeper to implement a hybrid cloud environment. While hybrid cloud environments do offer a high level of control, flexibility, and security, they also deliver a new level of complexity. This complexity tends to come in one of the following five challenges of hybrid cloud management:

Integration: Creating a cohesive environment from private and public clouds requires a deep understanding of where to place workloads, how to build the infrastructure to support it, and implementing a consistent set of processes and policies. Not all applications will best fit in a cloud environment, and determining how best to move processes with the right patterns and tools is complicated for even seasoned cloud IT specialists. If hundreds of applications are being managed, building the right infrastructure can be challenging.

Hybrid Cloud Management and Monitoring: A public cloud provider will generally have a native management and monitoring tool, and some of these are available using external application programming interface (API) services. The difficulty is that these tools still need to be integrated with on-premise monitoring and management. Generally, the enterprise will not want to utilize two different management systems, so many providers of on-premise tools are looking for ways to integrate public cloud providers for more streamlined management options.

Network Infrastructure: Network latency and overall performance is one of the key focal points for hybrid cloud management. The network design needs to account for bandwidth needs, management of private and public clouds, the locations of branch networks, and the requirements for each application. Network developers need to understand the scalability requirements of applications and how that impacts the infrastructure.  

Security: This is another area of challenges when it comes to hybrid cloud management because any transfers of data need to be handled within a strict set of policies and procedures. Using identity and access management consistently across private and public clouds requires a highly coordinated effort to meet both security and compliance requirements and to ensure no gaps are present in the hybrid cloud design.

Along with basic security, enterprises particularly in the health care or finance industries may have high hurdles to clear when it comes to compliance. Knowing where data resides and who has access can be a challenge in any cloud environment and only gets more complicated in a hybrid cloud setting.

Hybrid Governance: The structure needs to include considerations like on-demand services, rapid elasticity, cloud network access, and resource pooling. Teams can begin with practices that apply to governing task automation. They can also improve governance with an efficient communication plan that effectively informs employees of policy.

If your enterprise is struggling with hybrid cloud management, or if you’re considering a hybrid model and would like guidance in creating the right management framework, contact us at Cloud Source.

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