Cloud Computing

Overview 

Today’s cloud computing implementations promise low-cost, efficient, highly-scalable, utility-grade computing, but only after any challenges associated with your legacy architectures and technologies that were probably not designed with utility-grade services in mind are addressed.  Sandpiper assists our customers with the best approach to utilizing cloud computing and with vendor selection based on the overall services they provide, reputation and past experience.  The security, management and availability concerns of your enterprise must also be addressed before the utopia promised by the cloud-utility model can become a serious option for your enterprise-level businesses.

Cloud computing is really the next logical step to the various virtualization solutions and technologies we have seen become more prominent lately.  This virtualization approach has simply been extended to the internet and becomes more easily accessible and much more scalable in a shorter timeframe than internal in-house infrastructures can possibly hope to be.  Networks supporting the high-capacity bandwidth requirements that our large enterprise customers require have also become more affordable.  However, this cloud solution must be carefully planned, especially with regards to the unique application and other various business and IT components and requirements.  Challenges such as standards and industry agreed-upon architectures are also yet to be finalized.  

The support, investment costs and other requirements for a complex in-house IT infrastructure are becoming unmanagable for most small to medium sized businesses, especially in today's economy.  The value of in-house infrastructure is still a point of debate for most large businesses (hence the move to outsourcing we have seen come and go over the years.  These companies continue to struggle to determine if outsourcing really saved them any money in the long run or if it helped/hurt the overall service levels they experience).  Cloud computing offers to provide the IT capabilities these companies need without the majority of the support and other infrastructure costs that are traditionally incurred with in-house models.

Selecting your Cloud provider

Sandpiper has extensive experience assisting our customers match their specific business requirements to the right Cloud provider… All providers are not the same.  We also can help you decipher different kinds of Cloud solutions and technology, such as the upcoming Microsoft Azure and Azure Services Platform.  

How do we help?

We help you determine where and how cloud services fit into your company's IT architecture. This is important as IT departments subscribe to their first cloud services, and even more so as they sign on to services from multiple providers.

We prepare your company for the changes associated with cloud services. That goes beyond end user readiness to include the company's procurement and legal teams. Cloud services are different from traditional outsourcing services. For example, cloud service options tend to be standardized for all customers; there's less customization.

We attend to your identity management system. User access, security, and integration with on-premises systems and applications require a "clean," up-to-date identity management system. For example, with Microsoft customers, this means time spent preparing Active Directory.

We help you choose the right apps. Most companies will move into the cloud gradually, so it's a matter of deciding where to get started. SharePoint Online is very popular as a standalone service, given SharePoint's collaboration capabilities.   Sandpiper has extensive service offerings with regards to Sharepoint.

We help you select the right cloud service provider. Will the vendor be in it for the long run? Do they have enterprise credibility? Do they have a breadth of options?

Comparing in-house vs. cloud uptime/availability for the average firm

Application uptime will be higher overall with a properly applied and designed cloud utility model for the vast majority of businesses.  While some cloud providers have had a number of service outages in recent years, and continuing problems are still making headlines, Sandpiper analyzes the potential vendor's internal infrastructure and approach which ensures your business does not get caught up in outages such as these.  Intuition suggests that uptime is the business of any utility, including cloud computing, even if that utility is unregulated.  So, while cloud vendors are making great strides in improving overall availability, the key still is to ensure your business is immune regardless of the model you implement today.

IDC research indicates targeted annual in-house computing model uptime of less than 99% for very large businesses. The average number of employees per firm in the IDC report is 3,298.

For perspective, according to the U.S. census, approximately 80% of U.S. businesses have less than 500 employees with probably a much smaller IT support team than a larger firm.

We believe that average uptime in the IDC survey is likely an upper limit on the true average uptime for most U.S. businesses.

Amazon’s cloud computing service level agreement, to take one example, implies 99.95% availability, less than 5 hours of downtime per year

As-a-Service Model

Cloud computing also promises the support and flexibility required by customers searching for, and vendors providing, various 'as-a-service' models, be it hardware, platform, software, computing or other infrastructure components that can be offered with the utility model.  

Security

When turning to cloud computing, the function of IT security will morph into more of a compliance and risk management role, rather than traditional security operations.

Operational considerations such as data security, regulatory requirements and audit trails must be carefully considered when looking at the move to cloud computing.  Sandpiper has worked with some of the major vendors in the cloud computing space for a number of years now and can offer the architecture and operational strategies and methodologies you will need to fully exploit any use of cloud computing for your business.  We have implemented a variety of cloud computing solutions for some of the most demanding customers imaginable.  Sandpiper addressed the infrastructure and processes related issues that were prerequisites for these customers prior to adapting the cloud solution for full production uses, including:

  • Service Levels
  • Security & Confidentiality
  • Audit and Regulatory Compliance
  • Disaster Recovery & Business Continuity
  • Scalability
  • Operational Processes
  • Application modifications if needed

With respect to data security, organizations must review the vendor's data protection techniques to ensure appropriate cryptography is used for both data in rest and in motion, and make sure the appropriate documentation is available for auditors. In addition, the provider's access control and authentication procedures should be reviewed, and companies should find out if third parties have access to the information. 

We help you review the service provider's architecture to make sure proper data segregation is available and review their data leak prevention (DLP) deployment to prevent insider attacks, the report recommended. 

We also conduct a feasibility study that engages legal, risk, and compliance officers to determine if cloud computing is appropriate with respect to laws and regulations the business is subject to. Next, we help you navigate which security, legal, and compliance needs are most important and match the vendor that best meets those requirements, the report recommended. 

When writing up a contract, organizations should ensure the vendor has the appropriate industry certifications to meet your businesses needs. Organizations should seek ongoing assurance that providers are compliant. As added assurance, organizations should consider using an unbiased third party to assess the cloud provider. 

Your business must determine how sensitive the data going into the cloud is and how important security and privacy is. For data requiring the utmost security and privacy, organizations should request the ability to look at data centers and do a physical audit.  Also, having the service provider supply regular reports is important. Finally we help our customers conduct regular penetration testing of the Cloud infrastructure as an audit to ensure all concerns are adequately addressed.

In Summary

Sandpiper can provide an evaluation of the true costs of cloud computing when you factor in all the tools and services needed; an assessment of service providers' data center operations, including locations and security certifications; and attention to what we believe is an important integration consideration: hybrid clouds that span both the corporate data center and public cloud services.

For more information on how Sandpiper Data Systems can assist you with your move to cloud computing, please contact us today!