Grant Vine, image supplied
Cloud is the buzz of computing currently, but there are regular warnings concerning its use and Grant Vine, technical director of Cybervine IT Solutions, has offered some advice about considering cloud needs.
Vine said cloud computing has much to offer businesses as well as delivering real scale and cost benefits.
However, what is being offered in the South African market is not true cloud computing.
“True cloud services are a lot more user-friendly and cost-effective than remote hosted services, but not everyone is getting true cloud… Much of it amounts to little more than standard remote hosted solutions with the cloud brand slapped on them,” said Vine.
Vine explained that the “hosted solutions” in question have been offered in the same form for years already.
This means customers are expected to sign a contract, which gives them access to a certain amount of capacity for a certain amount of time, which is usually a year.
Furthermore, the fees remain unchanged whether the customer in question uses the capacity or not, and should the customer need more capacity, chances are the customer will be expected to upgrade their contract without the option of downscaling once their peak requirement is over.
“In fact, when hosting your virtual machines with an infrastructure hosting company, the overall cost in the long term could prove higher than buying the infrastructure yourself,” said Vine.
Vine added: “In contrast, true cloud computing requires complete change in the way we look at the deployment of software. It gives customers the ability to scale up and down as needed, and to pay only for what was actually used.”
Vine said companies considering a move into cloud-based services must consider their needs carefully.
He said it is advisable to conduct a “complete evaluation” of internally utilised products and services in order to ascertain what is appropriate to use on public cloud infrastructure.
Should contracts be necessary for cloud solutions, Vine advises companies to try and opt for shorter-term contracts, with month-to-month being the best.
“Be wary of the costs of putting data into the cloud vendor’s platform, as well as the cost of getting it back out. You may find there is a charge to take your VMs (virtual machines) and files to leave their environment, so it is important to read the contracts carefully,” said Vine.
Furthermore, Vine said it is imperative to understand the procedures and policies in the contract because certain terms, if not properly understood, could result in the inoperability of a company, due to servers being shut down, for example.
Vine said the “forklift approach to putting everything in the cloud could be risky and expensive. So be wary of being swept up in the tornado of hype, throwing caution to the wind and finding yourself with your head in the clouds and no way back to solid ground”.
