Category Archives: Cloud

Cloud and the role of SLA

As cloud computing is taking center stage for different IT enabled business enterprises it is highly essential to define policies, procedures and service level agreements (SLA) in order to maximize the value of cloud for both the consumer and the service provider. SLA statements written must be measurable, achievable, relevant and timely and should remain specific for cloud services aimed at minimizing ambiguities for both the cloud consumer and the cloud service providers.

The cloud service models (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, etc.) offer new paradigms of computing resources and IT enabled capabilities for all types of organizations. IT industry experts claim that over 80% of enterprises have adopted some cloud service in their organization. The key term ‘service’ in cloud computing creates the need to develop contracts named service level agreements (SLA) between the client organization and the cloud service provider (CSP). SLAs are used by companies for a long time, especially when the company hires third party service provider to manage some of their business operations. SLAs will ensure the consumer receives all the services availed as agreed by the provider and of course ensure money’s worth for the client.

Likewise, an organization deciding to hire cloud services for their IT needs, SLAs come into play to make sure the services offered by the CSP are delivered as promised. SLA has become a pre-requisite due to cloud business strategy and provides series of rules and directives that must be taken by cloud consumers to evaluate and negotiate terms with CSP. It describes a set of non-functional requirements of cloud services. An example of SLA can be the return of operations (RTO) in case of any service failure in the cloud.

Cloud SLA is imperative for compelling reasons,

  • Ensure availability and uptime
  • Specific performance benchmarks to compare actual cloud performance
  • Availability of usage statistics for the consumer
  • Informing scheduled changes to consumers in advance (eg., maintenance downtimes)
  • Help desk and support to resolve specific issues
  • To clarify the scope of resources used in cloud service of interest

SLAs are the means of documenting cloud services between the CSP and consumer and play a major role for the following reasons:

    • Roles and Responsibilities: Consumers must understand the roles and responsibilities and business relationships between them and the CSP. For example, an indirect actor namely cloud carrier is an entity providing the carrier or transport for cloud services between CSP the consumer. In this scenario, the SLA must cover provisioning of alternative carrier in case of non-availability our outage with one carrier. According to NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) reference architecture, the actors involved in cloud are: Consumer, CSP, Auditor, Broker and Carrier, with unique roles. Cloud consumers must recognize and understand the activities and roles of each entity or service in the cloud as explained by CSP including their own set of responsibilities.
    • Examine Business Level Policies: Business level SLAs would define Guarantees provided by the CSP (for example, guarantees will include 99.99% uptime, measurable performance and usage, etc.). Acceptable use policy is a business level SLA statement where the CSP describes how the service should be used, List of services not covered and Excess usage. Normally, the CSP will encourage the consumer to buy resources that is only required for their business. Other policies will include Payment and penalty models, Activation, Renewals, Transferability, Sub-contracted services, Licensed Software, Industry specific standards and Support.
    • Data Level Policies: Data level policies are critical in SLA. Here CSP will explain on how the consumer’s data is governed and protected in local jurisdiction or other locations where the data will reside or made available. Consumers must carefully evaluate legal requirements on how SLA will handle issues related to movement of data to offer multi-site storage in different jurisdictions for redundancy. The other critical SLAs in data level policies include, Data Preservation – backup, restore, redundancy, etc.; Data Locations – will verify data locations for consumers; Data Privacy – defines how consumer data is secured and used; Data Seizure – in some circumstances the data can be seized by government agencies, etc. Therefore, data level policies in SLA are the most critical policies which must be evaluated thoroughly by consumers.
    • Service and Deployment Model Differences: Service models are categorized as IaaS, PaaS and SaaS. The service models in cloud are unique in terms of service delivery and are defined with unique SLAs. Likewise cloud deployment models are private, public and hybrid clouds which have a unique set of SLAs. According to Cloud Standards Customer Council (CSCC), consumers should understand the nuances of service and deployment models and their corresponding SLAs because their value and risk varies significantly.
    • Describe Objectives for Critical Performance: SLA in performance objective relates to efficiency, accuracy and service delivery. Performance statements in the SLA will help consumers to measure and audit different aspects on cloud performance. Performance metrics are dependent for each service IaaS, PaaS and SaaS. For example, performance considerations for IaaS will include network and compute and so on.
    • Security and Privacy Considerations: SLAs related to security and privacy considerations deals with information assets – data, applications, functions and processes and can be defined based on criticality and sensitivity of consumer data. Normally CSPs offer global security standards defined in standards such as ISO, COBIT, ITIL, etc. The SLA will also cover alternative actions in case of security breaches or data loss for the consumer.

In addition to the above roles, SLAs will also define areas such as disaster recovery, service management, auditing, self-service metering and provisioning, solutions for service failure, remedies and limitations in cloud services. SLAs will also state exit processes followed in case a consumer wishes to discontinue from a service provider.

Private Cloud vs Public Cloud

The debate on which cloud model is right for business often arises when an organization plans to migrate to the cloud. Both, the private and public cloud models have their own set of pros and cons. Any organization migrating to the cloud must first carefully understand public and private clouds for their benefits and disadvantages and finally decide their journey into the cloud.

The advent of cloud computing models is providing new directions for organizations in terms of scope and value. Organizations that are fully dependent on IT to meet business goals have understood the value of cloud computing for its availability, scalability, instant provisioning, virtualized resources and storage. Both private and public cloud models are available from cloud service providers but, first an organization thinking to deploy a cloud service must carefully examine the advantages and disadvantages of both private and public clouds.

Public clouds are hosted services available by cloud service providers on the internet. Organizations that use web servers or application systems where security and compliance requirements are not very rigid normally prefer to use public clouds. For example, public cloud services are available in the form of web based email, data storage or file transfers over the internet, online office applications, web hosting and so on. Public clouds are most suited for start-ups and small businesses because of minimal set up costs. The resources (servers, storage, etc.) are shared between multiple users publicly and the infrastructure, services and usage policies are managed by the service provider.

Contrary to the above, private clouds or enterprise clouds are used by organizations that have security, compliance and data privacy as their top priority. Private clouds are deployed inside firewalls and offer robust IT security for the organization. If a data center infrastructure is already available with the organization the private cloud can be implemented in-house. However, for having in-house private clouds the organization needs to invest heavily in running and maintaining the infrastructure which can result in significant capital expenditure. This can be a major setback for organizations thinking to reduce IT budgets. Private cloud services are also made available by cloud service providers or data centers. Examples of private cloud implementations can be easily found in areas such as banking and financial institutions, large enterprise organizations, government organizations, etc. where only authorized users are able to access the system.

It is essential to understand the intricacies of both these models before deciding to choose the appropriate model for the organization. The table below summarizes the main factors which can be used to determine between private and public clouds.

Advantages
Private CloudsPublic Clouds

Private cloud infrastructure is a dedicated infrastructure provided to one single organization or client.

  • Controls: Better controls for data, users and information assets.
  • Cost: Initial investment for hardware is very high in case of an on-premise infrastructure.
  • Security: The cloud belongs to a single client. Hence, the infrastructure and systems can be configured to provide high levels of security.
  • Superior Performance: Normally private clouds are deployed inside the firewall of the organization’s intranet which ensures efficiency and good network performance.
  • Easy Customization: The hardware and other resources can be customized easily by the company.
  • Compliance: Compliance is achieved easily in private clouds.

In public clouds the resources are shared between multiple clients and all the services are controlled by services provider.

  • Simple and easy: Public clouds are available as a service in the internet, they are easy to deploy.
  • Cost: Initial investment is very low or nil.
  • Less time: The IT resources and services are available immediately saving time for the company.
  • No maintenance: The hardware and networks are maintained by the cloud services provider. Internal IT staffs have no responsibility in maintaining the infrastructure.
  • No contracts: No long term commitment with service provider because public clouds are usually pay-as-you-go models.
Disadvantages
  • Cost: Costs are substantial in the case of building an on-premise private cloud. The running cost would include personnel cost and periodic hardware upgrade costs. In the case of outsourced private cloud, operating cost will include per resource usage and subject to change at the discretion of the service provider.
  • Lacks proper controls: The client has no control of data or infrastructure. There are issues of data privacy and integrity. The service level policies and compliances are completely enforced by the service provider.
  • Under-utilization: In some instances the resources subscribed can be under-utilized. Hence, optimizing the utilization of all resources is a challenge.
  • Performance: The performance of the network depends on the speed of the internet connectivity.
  • Capacity ceiling: Due to physical hardware limitations with the service provider, there could be a capacity ceiling to handle only certain amount of servers or storage.
  • Weak on Security: Since the hardware resource is shared between multiple users, IT security issues are more profound and data is vulnerable to thefts.
  • Vendor lock-in: This can be a major impediment in private cloud adoption especially when the hardware and infrastructure is outsourced. This is a service delivery technique where the client company is forced to continue with the same service provider, thus preventing the client to migrate to another vendor.
  • Customization: Customization of resources or services is not possible.

Depending on the organization’s computing environment based on the above factors along with the levels of security and scalability needed, the organization can decide between deploying a private or public cloud.

Cloud Enables Business Agility, Scalability and Cost Optimization

In highly volatile markets, business organizations follow strategies to explore new opportunities. These strategies will be based on agility, flexibility and developing capacities to scale up or down to stay ahead of competitors. Cloud computing service models promote business growth because they promote business agility due to advantages such as scalability and cost savings.

Cloud computing in any of its forms viz, IaaS, PaaS, or SaaS enables organizations to minimize their complexities in running their own infrastructure. According to Gartner, IT service industry is constantly facing challenges from two opposing areas – Business and IT. On the one hand, business organizations demand new and innovative systems to engage customers, gain new markets and promote efficient partner interactions. On the other, there is a constant demand for reliable and efficient IT services to handle business demands efficiently. Cloud based services due to their scalable nature can be considered an ideal solution to tackle both these challenges.

To understand how cloud can enable business agility, we consider one business example. Suppose the sales and marketing team identifies one new opportunity to be capitalized quickly, there is an immediate need for new systems and applications which normally takes over 3 or 4 weeks to setup, by which time the opportunity could be lost. Cloud models provide on-demand IT resources rapidly to make available the network infrastructure along with applications which can be used by the organization immediately to gain value. When this opportunity ceases the resources can be de-scaled, thus saving cost in investing and maintaining new hardware.

Organizations desiring to be agile tend to be more elastic in their approach in responding to changing market needs quickly and cloud models due to their elasticity allows organizations to innovate and experiment with minimum financial impact. Hence, business agility is the ability to capitalize on new potential opportunities much more quickly than competitors. According to one study done by HBR analytic services in 2014, companies are adopting cloud computing to increase business agility and gain competitiveness.

Cloud computing due to its ability to scale plays a key role fostering business agility. Scalability refers to functioning efficiently in changed business contexts. For example, consider an e-commerce portal selling gift items and life style products that performs around 2000 transactions per week on the average. The same portal can experience a rapid surge in the number of hits going up to 2 million transactions during festive season. In order to handle such sudden rise in volume, the servers, storage and network needs to scale upwards automatically to handle transactions easily. Cloud models provide automatic scaling or de-scaling of servers, storage and network bandwidth to handle large volumes efficiently. Likewise, again when the demand is low, the cloud bandwidth will adjust itself to the volume of data. Therefore, clouds helps to converge different business processes through rapid provisioning of resources (storage, compute, network, etc.) to handle changes in size or volume of data to fulfill changing business needs driven by external environments.

Cost optimization in cloud is another area for discussion within business circles. Cloud computing models do not require spending money on purchase of new hardware or there is no capital expenditure involved instead, the money spent in using a cloud service model is known as operating expenditure. There are two payment models offered by cloud service providers. One is known as pay-per-use model where the consumer is charged for utilizing a resource for a specified duration. Pay-per-use can be any type of resource such as hardware, software, or application (for example, storage in GB, CPU, network bandwidth, etc.). In this model the consumer pays for each resource utilized. The advantage here is that when the resource is not utilized or needs to scale down it can be returned back to the data center and no charges are billed to the consumer.

The other model is fixed price model where the consumer pays a fixed amount for certain amount of unit resources for a time period (normally in months or a year). Fixed price model is also known as subscription model. In the subscription model the consumer also pays for resources that are not actually used or consumed. This is seen as wastage of resource and cost. The company depending on its business need can choose the most appropriate pricing model in order to benefit from operating costs. It may also be noted that pay-per-use model is dynamic where the prices are changed according to resource purchased.

In addition to pricing, cloud computing optimizes cost to a large extent because the benefits of agility are more profound and substantial in the long run than mere cost savings. The scalable nature of cloud computing in its service delivery model along with the integration of external information sources caters to business growth efficiently. Cloud computing technologies with their service models is a true enabler for organizations to achieve business agility, scalability and cost optimization.

Top 5 Benefits of Cloud Adoption

Over the past few years cloud computing services and delivery models are being embraced by organizations globally for their numerous benefits. The data aggregated from cloud adoption trends show that companies are willing to use cloud services due to their business and IT benefits and to avoid costs in maintaining and upgrading their in-house infrastructure. The various cloud service models available from cloud service providers in combination offer an added advantage for companies planning to adopt a model that is most appropriate for their operations.

Cloud computing services provide the opportunity for companies to adopt the best suited service delivery models in combination to address business needs with efficiency and speed. The benefits offered by the cloud in general are: collaboration, data availability, flexibility, greater business agility and cost savings. Cloud computing services are providing the headlights on how companies can invest and use technology. This is further highlighted by the report titled “Cloud adoption Practices & Priorities Survey Report” published by Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) in January 2015. Their survey shows an interesting 86% of IT companies have adopted some kind of cloud service within their organization.

Benefits of Cloud AdoptionThe focus of this article is to understand some of the top benefits that can be derived from cloud from the perspective of organizations’ as a whole. The main advantage of cloud adoption is that it offers scalable enterprise IT with speed. Speed can be understood as efficiency and is a pre-requisite for gaining competitive advantage. The cloud offers the required speed for a company to launch new products quickly and gain competitiveness in markets easily. Cloud models create what is known as ‘shadow IT’, where the need for IT personnel is reduced and employees are able to use enterprise applications efficiently. This can be another advantage. Hence, companies in almost all sectors irrespective of their size, scale and strategic goals can reap benefits from the cloud.

The top 5 benefits of cloud computing are:

1. Reduced Capital Expenditure: Capital expenditure refers to money incurred on purchasing new hardware and in building and managing an in-house IT infrastructure. In the case of cloud, there is no need for any in-house infrastructure equipment as the entire network and storage infrastructure can be made available from a data center. Likewise the company need not spend money in upgrading hardware and buying software licenses with limited time span because the cloud service provider will take the responsibility for providing infrastructure and provisioning resources (both hardware and software) for the company to suit business needs. In the cloud, resources are made available on-demand and redundant resources can be returned back, thus saving cost. Similarly the company may not spend money on hiring IT personnel to look after the infrastructure. Also, the cloud provides the ability to expand easily in future without additional expense in purchasing in-house equipment.

2. Scalability, Flexibility and mobility: Cloud allows users the ability to scale or de-scale infrastructure on demand with ease, resulting in optimal utilization of resources. This apart, cloud services allow users to access resources from remote locations using any type of device (Tablets, Laptops, Smartphones, etc.). Data, files and documents can be accessed around the clock and it is also possible to work online replicating an office environment. Hence, flexibility and mobility are inherent benefits which make employees to be productive. Cloud models provide everything that allows people to stay connected while being mobile.

3. Easy to maintain and upgrade: The management of infrastructure (servers, storage, software, network, bandwidth, etc.) is the responsibility of the cloud service provider. With this benefit the in-house IT personnel can be allocated with other work and may not engage themselves full time to monitor the IT department. Cloud service providers hire teams of experts who are responsible to ensure continuity of service. In addition to this, upgrades are done by the service provider and may not be done in-house which saves time and money for users. This implies that whenever a new solution or a patch is implemented in the cloud, it becomes available to all the users immediately at no extra cost.

4. Enhanced IT security: The area of IT security is highly critical for organizations. Many companies have compromised their data and information due to security breaches or attacks. Cloud computing actually makes servers and storage more secure by defining different levels of security by implementing robust intrusion detection and prevention systems, firewalls and performing security audits regularly in their data centers to protect data. As cloud computing models are maturing fast the aspect of security and fear of data loss or theft is relieved for the user.

5. Ensures Business Continuity: This benefit refers to providing continuous IT services to ensure continued business operations during events such as technology outage, hardware failure or even unexpected disasters such as fire or flood. Business operations can be seriously affected and disrupted for many days during such events particularly in case of in-house IT systems. The remote working capabilities offered by cloud models ensures user data and services are available during unforeseen events. With cloud services, employees can simply login normally from their laptops and perform work as usual. In addition to the above benefits, there are many more advantages of cloud computing services. Clouds ensure smooth integration of data during mergers and acquisitions, launch new business products or services without spending money on supporting systems and leveraging latest technology and tools to foster a tech-savvy enterprise, and so on, to mention a few more advantages.

How cloud computing can foster business agility?

In the current competitive market scenario, business agility is one key enabler for businesses to sustain their operations and achieve competitive gains. Business agility is all about adapting quickly to rapid market conditions and not getting lost in the competition. Conventional IT infrastructures have issues in quickly provisioning resources to support new business initiatives. Cloud computing models are an ideal IT service solution to overcome issues in IT resources and simultaneously promote business agility to achieve competitiveness.

Cloud service providers claim that adopting a cloud for business will lead to competitiveness and optimize business outcomes by improving agility. These claims is inspiring but let us first understand agility from the perspective of both, business and IT and examine how cloud models can support business agility. Firstly, the definition of business agility states that it is a term or a concept where organizations approach their markets and operational changes as a matter of routine. Business agility is a quality in which organizations adjust immediately to changing market conditions, take advantage of potential opportunities quickly, rapidly deploy new distribution channels at reduced costs and maximize their profits in the process.

CIOs experts claim that among the number of new technologies available, cloud computing models are ideal to realize business agility within an organization. This is because cloud models permit scalability (up and down), adjustable per user costs, pay for each resource and so on. Cloud computing can embrace an agile organization by supporting mobility, encouraging internal communication through collaboration software and permit interactions with customers in real time in order to create a constant feedback loop to drive business agility efforts.

The concept of agility is similar to the methods of agile project management where project teams analyze their priorities and project tasks are continuously evaluated throughout the entire project life cycle, rather than evaluating outcomes and performance at the end of the project. Basically, business agility is a systematic approach in change management which provides a framework for the organization on how to respond to change without neglecting the needs of the entire organization. An agile enterprise is understood as immune to change, and proficient in adopting itself to any change (internal or external) in a sustainable manner.

Agility is achieved in cloud computing because of its elasticity and flexibility. IT resources can be deployed much quickly and can be increased or decreased to meet market demand. Due to this flexibility enterprises can introduce new products or services, and adapt to changing circumstances. This flexibility and elasticity is applicable to all cloud deployment models. In addition to this since, the infrastructure is managed by an external cloud services organization there is no need to train IT staff within the company. Cloud models support agility in certain key areas for business enterprises, they are:

  • Quickly adapt to changing business processes: In agility existing business processes are changed or new processes are introduced. This change in processes would require IT resources to be replaced or new resources to be added. Cloud computing easily handles these changes by allowing companies to quickly add or change IT resources easily to support their changed processes.
  • Enables on-demand resources for development and testing: Resources are needed to support business processes and to test and develop new software. Procuring new resources and implementing them within the existing infrastructure can be time consuming and can introduce significant delays in capitalizing business opportunities. This can also be a business risk since money is spent on new expensive resources and must not become counterproductive. Adopting a cloud model will eliminate these risks as resources are available on-demand which saves time. Further, the usage based payment offered by cloud models replaces the initial up-front cost spent on new resources within the company.
  • Optimizes IT budgets: The usage model of pay per resource supports business companies to implement and test projects faster, saving money from new resources to be procured and made available. This eliminates budget allocation for IT capital expenditure, and supports finance to easily allocate fixed costs incurred on monthly basis. Cloud models makes it possible to have good control on unexpected IT spending with very little effort.
  • Focus more on IT strategies: Clouds are flexible and can scale quickly to provide speed and efficiency for business processes and transactions. Cloud applications can be accessed via the internet which supports businesses to access their elements and have more productive interactions with customers. IT teams have less burden of maintaining an infrastructure and the focus can be more on implementing new applications that are productive and will drive business results.

In June 2014, HBR Analytic Services conducted a survey titled “Business Agility in the Cloud” to show the link between the cloud, business agility and increased competitive advantage. The survey sponsored by Verizon included 527 participants from large and medium business enterprises. The results indicate that 71% of the responses have implemented cloud computing to reduce complexities in business processes and IT management. Within the cloud adopters, 74% mention that their business is able to achieve competitive advantage by moving their business processes to the cloud.

The Verizon report also explains that 32% of the companies having adopted the cloud are able to achieve business agility in rapidly changing and competitive markets. These 32% respondents further emphasize that with cloud adoption their enterprises are able to see benefits around speed, simplification and are able to connect with people and data which are all enablers of business agility. Looking into the above benefits and advantages and data, cloud computing models are becoming mainstream IT delivery models for enterprises.

The State of Cloud Adoption in India

Cloud computing offers immense potential and benefits for all types of organizations. In India, the adoption of cloud computing is gaining momentum and growing exponentially. This is because of the government’s support in embracing emerging latest technologies and best practices derived from different cloud deployment scenarios and application areas. Research studies indicate that CIOs in India are planning to move their business operations to the cloud and this remains their top priority.

Most of us are aware cloud computing has changed the way IT services are provisioned and used. Cloud’s potential of scalability and pay-as-you-go pricing models is the primary benefit extended by cloud services to organizations in order to achieve effectiveness through technology. In case of SMBs, cloud services minimize barriers to their growth by reducing infrastructure costs and upfront investments. During the last few years, IT professionals in many different organizations in India have witnessed and accustomed themselves to cloud adoption. Cloud computing usage is gaining momentum in India mainly because of government support, vendor offerings, and proven best practices, which have resulted in many organizations in India planning to move to the cloud on priority.

Research studies done during the last 5 years indicate that Indian businesses are willing to spend over 36% of their IT costs on public cloud services due to its business flexibility and low costs. The study made by Gartner explains that public cloud service sales are worth 24.54 billion INR in 2013, which is a 36% increase compared to 2010 figures. Gartner predicts that growth is constant at compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 33.2%. Smaller companies are more willing and quick to adopt public clouds because it reduces their upfront costs associated with new hardware, software implementations and maintenance costs. The Gartner study also predicts that the business potential of cloud computing in India will touch 89 billion INR by 2017. This statistical data is quite likely to change soon, but first let us have a look into cloud adoption across a few sectors.

Cloud Services in government: The Government of India is embracing cloud computing technology for expanding its e-governance initiatives throughout the country. In India, the focus of e-governance is to reduce corruption and ensure the government schemes are reaching people living in rural areas of the country. Further, e-governance services ensure quicker service delivery and eliminate the involvement of middlemen who tend to capitalize on loopholes for quick money by means of exploiting people. To mention one initiative, the Department of Electronics and Information Technology under the Ministry of Communications and IT is highly optimistic of adopting cloud computing in governance and has made plans for the creation of IT enabled services, applications and policies towards achieving full benefits in different government initiatives. The department plans to offer solutions by electronic means, promote R & D initiatives, solutions for cyber-security and National Information Infrastructure, develop IT policies and so on, where cloud computing will be used extensively.

Cloud adoption in manufacturing: Indian manufacturing sector has come a long way and the use of IT in manufacturing can be found since last over 2 decades. Since 2010, CIOs in Indian manufacturing have started adopting cloud models and this is highlighted in many research studies and industry circles. Some of the most notable application areas in manufacturing suited for cloud are CRM and supply chain applications which provide better connectivity to external stakeholders and customers. The area of business intelligence (BI) and business analytics (BA) is highly important for manufacturing sector because of large amounts of data generated in manufacturing which is a challenge for CIOs. For instance analytics will help the organization to better forecast products range and provide analysis for future investments in different business areas. BI helps to understand customer demands and provide inputs for demand shaping. Human machine interface (HMI) is another area where companies such as Jindal Steel have adopted cloud model for their HMI applications to quickly recover their ROI. HMI refers to interfacing IT systems like ERP with manufacturing executing systems (MES) and plant automation. In addition to the above applications, the other areas where cloud enhances manufacturing effectiveness are in data warehousing, information security, green IT, and many others.

Cloud adoption in Indian IT industry: The research by IDC titled “Indian Cloud Market Overview 2011-2016” provides estimates that Indian cloud market will grow over 70% from 2014. The cloud is transforming Indian IT industry and some of the highlights include,

  • With increased number of IT companies and ISPs in India, cloud IaaS model is helping SMEs to have access to latest infrastructure thus reducing their in-house infrastructure costs.
  • PaaS model provides immense advantages for software companies. PaaS supports developers with different development platforms and in turn providing savings to the company from heavy capital expenditure.
  • Organizations big and small are having advantages by adopting SaaS model. For example, Indian companies by implementing applications such as SAP Business, Office 365, etc. tend to benefit greatly from the hassles of maintaining IT applications to result in cost savings.

In addition to the above highlighted sectors, cloud service models are used in other industry domains such as finance and banking, advertising, health care, etc., slowly but steadily. The slow pace can be attributed to certain barriers such as inadequate knowledge of cloud technologies, connectivity issues and customer awareness in terms of ROI in cloud adoption.

The key drivers for IT growth in India is highlighted by the growing acceptance of cloud based solutions, embracing merging technologies like Internet of Things (IoT), Big Data, mobile technologies (3G, 4G) and fuelled by Indian government’s initiatives for a digital India. In a recent research done by Zinnov Management Consulting titled “India’s Domestic IT Market Landscape 2015”, the estimated Indian IT market is at $36 billion in 2015 with 14% growth to reach $65 billion in 2020. The report explains that,

  • The Indian government’s Digital India project provides potential opportunities for cloud adoption at a cost of $19 billion between 2014-2018
  • The estimated growth of public cloud market is pegged at $7.4-7.6 billion and private cloud at the rate of $7 billion by 2020

The above studies and data indicate that cloud adoption is fast catching up in India and transforming IT services to provide a new direction. In addition to this, new mobile technologies like SMAC (Social Mobile Analytics Cloud) are used by business organizations to gain competitive advantage and growth. NASSCOM’s “Perspective 2020” report is highly optimistic about India’s progress in mobility, broadband and internet connectivity over the next 2 years and beyond. From the above, it is more apparent that, cloud offers the most ideal infrastructure for operating a variety of IT applications across all types of organizations in India.

Many Models One Cloud: Overcoming the Jigsaw Puzzle in Cloud Selection

As cloud computing is gaining adoption by organizations due to its immense benefits, not all cloud models will work for every type of business. There are subtle and major differences with each model and the working of each model is unique. Each cloud model has its own advantages and shortcomings. Organizations planning to implement cloud services in their operations must carefully examine the pros and cons of each model and decide the most appropriate model to suit their business and generate value in the long run.

Cloud computing is emerging as a potential driver for business innovation and growth. Cloud computing promises new business models, planning for business strategies to obtain competitive advantage in markets and offers global business potential. All of us understand, cloud is a service model that offers IT resources and services for any type of business and ensures flexibility in terms of volume and scale. Users can access cloud services and applications, using any web browser on a desktop, laptop or on a mobile device connected to the internet. Some of the key enablers offered by cloud in terms of business benefits include,

  • Flexibility in terms of cost: The costing in cloud models is a variable. Cloud implementations allow business companies to ‘pay for the resource as and when needed.’ This offers the benefit of reduced capital expenditure in upgrading and running an in-house IT infrastructure.
  • Business scalability: Cloud provides flexibility. Resources in the cloud can scale up or down to support business growth and in times when business is lean. This is another benefit.
  • Adaptability in the market: All cloud models enable faster time to market, and provides scope for business innovations and explore new opportunities.
  • Context-driven variability:Increases the relevance of products and services and enables user defined experiences.
  • Connectivity with the existing ecosystem: Cloud models offer capabilities to fully integrate into existing infrastructure.

In cloud models, business firms have the opportunity to leverage cloud business enablers for achieving competitiveness in markets through innovation across customer value propositions and in the industry value chain. Cloud services are available in three major service models namely, Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS). Cloud computing models are available in three deployment types namely, Private Cloud, Public Clouds and Hybrid Clouds to suit the requirements in different types of operations.

Making the right choice – Selecting the most appropriate model

It is highly important to have a closer look into the service offerings while choosing the right infrastructure model.

  • PaaS: This service allows applications and programming models to be deployed easily. Specialized services such as authentication, payment gateways, data access, etc. are implemented in PaaS. It offers the benefit of creating web applications and eliminates the need to buy hardware and software that is required in software application development scenarios. System developers need not worry on how processing is done, how much memory and storage is to be used, etc. these are taken care by the cloud infrastructure. PaaS offers all the services required to fulfill the processes (end-to-end lifecycle of development, testing, deployment and hosting complex web based applications) of application development in order to deliver it as a service. Creating and maintaining an infrastructure for efficiency and scalability is time consuming and costs lot of money. PaaS model help businesses to get rid of this major problem. PaaS is gaining popularity and adoption by IT solutions companies, engineering enterprises, etc.
  • SaaS: This service offers the benefit of deploying applications online thereby attracting consumers (users). In SaaS, applications and software can be used by a web browser over the internet and the software is managed centrally. Since applications are centralized, software upgrades, patches, security, etc. are handled by the service provider or client. API integration is possible between different software components. SaaS is very popular because it provides various benefits for business companies. SaaS offers the maximum benefits in scenarios such as, email applications and business productivity tools, e-commerce portals, helpdesk/support services, data processing capabilities over the web (payroll processing, billing, etc); collaboration software, etc. Applications are available for multiple clients using a variety of devices. SaaS model is widely used by businesses for the purposes of e-mail, helpdesk/support services, logistics tracking, monitoring progress in sales and marketing domains, financial management, customer relationship management, etc. SaaS can be a viable option for SMEs looking to maximize business value with minimal IT budgets.
  • IaaS: Infrastructure as a service enables on-demand provisioning of servers running several choices of operating systems and customized software. IaaS delivers the infrastructure (servers, storage, network and OS). This is a fully outsourced service available for on-demand access and offers to deliver resources, provides dynamic scaling, pricing model based on utility usage, support for multiple users and so on. IaaS is suited for organizations without capital to invest in hardware and most suited for organizations where growth is rapid and there are problems in scaling up. IaaS eliminates the need of maintaining expensive server hardware and network components within the firm which is saves hardware costs. In fact, IaaS is a facility given to businesses that allow users to leverage on compute, network and storage space in servers and data centers.

Companies looking for the right cloud service must choose from PaaS, SaaS or IaaS Service models depending on their need and the chosen service model must fulfill their business objectives. It is important to ensue the chosen service model must blend seamlessly into their existing business operations. In addition to choosing the service model, there are some factors to consider by business in choosing their deployment model.

Factors to consider in Implementing Cloud Computing Services in Business

Deployment models available in cloud are private clouds, public clouds and hybrid clouds. Firstly, companies must develop a blueprint which is developed by exploring answers for the following questions,

  • What is the current state of business and how well it operates today?
  • Where are the efficiencies, gaps, risks, and opportunities for change?
  • What is the plan to manage change and achieve the intended ROI?

When a company is considering a cloud for improving business outcomes it should consider how the cloud can fit into its business strategy and associated functions. Cloud implementations are not limited to one type of deployment. There is a wide spectrum of choices available for a company to choose from. Here are some more criteria to consider for selecting a cloud deployment model.

  • Criteria for Public Clouds: The public cloud provides a cost-effective service to business services. Public service model helps businesses to understand the missing components in existing IT portfolio such as outdated applications, issues in extra processing, storage and capacity when needed. The major reasons for adopting a public cloud model for business are cost, speed and specialization. The public cloud offers pay-as-you-go pricing model which gives substantial savings compared to capital expenditure (CapEx) and operational expenditure (OpEx).
  • Criteria for Private Clouds: A private cloud is deployed mostly by very large enterprises and works on the notion of self-service on premise infrastructure managed and maintained by in-house IT. The private cloud can fulfill both the perspectives of business goals and the expanding IT workloads due to increased business activity. A private cloud is designed to deliver better service results, improve agility and efficiency and improve collaboration between the various departments within the organization. A private cloud is designed to solve many of the IT and management problems and offers service availability and centralization of data and applications.
  • Criteria for Hybrid Clouds: Hybrid clouds are a mix of private and public clouds. Hybrid clouds are often viewed by enterprises as an ideal solution to fulfill compliance, avoid vendor lock-ins and to overcome data security and privacy issues. Hybrid clouds are also seen as a strategic option when the private cloud environment cannot always provide the resources required by an application with unpredictable growth patterns. As the application grows the available resources in a private cloud may not be able to support the growing user base. In such cases a hybrid cloud is considered by the organization to own some portion of the infrastructure and the public cloud is used for the remaining resources. In order for a hybrid cloud to be effective, the company must define policies for security loopholes.

A few architectural principles to consider when implementing cloud for the business will include aspects such as

  • Service Orientation
  • Service Foundations for workload profitability between private and public models
  • Service Standards are maintained to ensure business operations without disruptions
  • Ensure Ecosystem alignment to mitigate issues in service or resource availability

Despite the advantages and benefits offered by the cloud models one should make a decision on the right model after carefully weighing the pros and cons and examine service level agreements (SLA) carefully before adoption.

Cloud Computing Enables Business Efficiency and Cost Savings

Cloud computing systems are impacting business organizations significantly. The costs in maintaining an IT infrastructure to ensure continuous service availability within the organization is becoming complex and running costs are increasing. IT managers or executives are keenly aware of the issues in managing an IT infrastructure. Cloud computing service models provide an alternative to existing IT infrastructure in overcoming issues of IT management and as a business enabler with significant cost savings.

What is Cloud Computing?

Simply put, cloud computing is a method of providing a standard set of shared computing resources with the objective of providing ubiquitous IT services delivery. Cloud computing can be understood as an approach to a shared infrastructure in which large pool of systems are linked together in public or private networks to provide IT services. Cloud infrastructure normally consists of clusters of servers, networked storage, and related hardware with adequate fault tolerance to provide service availability. Cloud computing services focus on the user, since they decouple computing services from underlying technology resulting in extremely user friendly. The need for adopting cloud services is very much in demand by enterprise organizations, government, educational institutions, SMEs and also small organizations and individuals.

In cloud a business company can use an appropriate resource to accomplish a task and return the resource back to the pool. From the perspective of the user the technology virtually remains invisible. Cloud computing service is available for many service areas and the major services are: IaaS, PaaS, SaaS and PaaS. They are briefly given below:

  • Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) allows users to obtain storage, networks, and basic computing resources as a service. Users can deploy systems software (an OS) on the infrastructure.
  • Platform as a Service (PaaS) provide the facility to build and deploy newly developed applications on the cloud infrastructure. PaaS also has the ability to provide a computing environment and the related development and deployment stack needed to deliver a solution to the consumer.
  • Software as a Service (SaaS) offers to deliver the application in which the processes are matured to run on a cloud infrastructure. The application can be accessed from clients in different locations through a web-browser. A typical example is web-based email.

The cloud computing services are available as three models namely the private cloud which is a secure infrastructure owned and used internally by an organization, like in a corporate office; the public cloud model which allows global use of resources, but the infrastructure is owned by one party, for example Gmail from Google; the other model is called the hybrid cloud which is a combination of both private and public cloud model scenarios.

Cloud models provide services that are not easily available in a normal client server based network infrastructure. The advantages of using a cloud in businesses are many. The advantages include,

  • The ability to scale up or down as the need for resources increases or decreases. This is also known as elasticity
  • Provisioning and de-provisioning of resources is automatic respectively with self-service metering
  • Centralized pooling of IT resources (storage, data and applications)
  • Billing and metering of service usage. Users can monitor their resource usage and pay for per resource or pay for each service availed.
  • Applications and services are available efficiently and without disruptions
  • Reduced costs in IT infrastructure maintenance and management

Larger enterprises have higher IT budgets and they are able to reach the global market quickly by using the internet. SMEs often face the challenge of competing with bigger enterprises and the cloud provides the much needed leverage for them to capture potential opportunities found beyond their geographical boundaries.

The Cloud Maximizes Business Performance

During the last decade, the technological advances in electronics and digital equipments have progressed rapidly resulting in massive use of hardware components to increase the operational efficiency in IT environments. This trend has invited many issues related to manageability of resources, high costs for running the equipment and power related issues for efficiently using IT infrastructure to achieve business objectives. CIOs and IT managers often come across these issues in their day-to-day working. The need to manage IT as a unified resource gave rise to cloud computing because the infrastructure is scalable, flexible, and can be managed by the users themselves. Moreover, the cloud can provide superior computing performance for business operations and market expansion without failure. This paved the way for adopting cloud computing models that are currently available from major IT and data center vendors.

      • Elasticity: In a normal client-server system the resources are fixed and are designed for certain amount of computing power, network and storage. When the need for more storage or computing power arises additional hardware is required. Similarly when the volume of transactions is low, the higher configurations and resources become redundant. In the case of a cloud, the resources are available to expand as the business data expands and can also scale down. This feature offers the availability of bandwidth, storage, etc the company can utilize the exact amount of resources required and pay for what is used.
      • Economy of Scale: Cloud computing provides the ability to allow many companies to share their best practices and technical expertise. For example, a SME may not be able to incur cost on hiring skilled personnel, but by collaborating in a cloud they may obtain this benefit without any cost.
      • Self-service and Metering: This is ideal for most companies because IT staff in a company can request the amount of resource required to fulfill the company’s needs. Cloud service providers offer an interface by which the user can request the resource, or a seat or license for one or many user(s). The user is billed for the type of resource and the number of resources used in the system.
      • Business Process Services: The cloud infrastructure can has the ability to handle repetitive business processes such as payroll processing, supply chain monitoring, automated production processes, etc. A self-service interface allows the use of this service and customization is also possible.
      • Security and Management Services: Cloud services use the same internet data-links for transferring data and they co-exist with the world-wide web. Hence it critical to protect these systems from viruses and threats related to data protection and privacy. A well-planned security strategy is mandatory for companies planning to adopt any type of cloud service.
      • Optimized IT and cost benefits: IT optimization is possible in a cloud computing because resources are configured for maximum cost-benefit. Cost benefit is high in the cloud because the cloud models supports massive scalability to meet periods of demand while avoiding extended periods of under-utilized IT capacity. Users with a mouse click can quickly expand or contract a service without requiring overhauls to the core data center. Business companies can eliminate cost on deploying and running an on-premise IT infrastructure. There is cost savings in personnel too. The other cloud benefits include low cost of ownership, which fosters higher profitability, enabling a business to more easily reinvest in their business expansion programs.
      • Collaboration Services: With the cloud it is easy to collaborate because of its ability to use networks on the internet. The cloud platform can collaborate between employees, partners, businesses and customers in different locations. Social business collaboration is quickly gaining popularity. This service enables companies to collaborate with the right experts at the right time to achieve business goals.

The services mentioned above are broad in nature and available with any cloud service. Companies that rely heavily on the internet to expand their business and retain customers require better performing IT systems where cloud computing service is an ideal option. SMEs derive many attractive benefits by using the cloud service because adopting an appropriate model for their business is proved to drastically reduce their IT infrastructure and resource costs. An SME can simply deploy an application in the cloud and avoid the costs of managing the application (namely IT staff, storage, hardware, network, etc). Further, the application running on a cloud is highly efficient and available 24×7 without break downs, resulting in customer retention and a happy user experience.

CtrlS:Providing Continuity, Customization, Compliance and Control in the Cloud

Post launch of our Cloud Product – Ctrl4C, CIO review magazine has covered it as “Product of the Month” in their May issue. It also features CtrlS in “20 Most promising Cloud Computing Product companies in India” listing positioned at number 2.

Sridhar

With the advent of cloud computing many enterprises today are able to meet their hardware and software requirements with IT infrastructures hosted in huge data centers. Data centers have become an absolute necessity helping enterprises to not only reduce the hardware and software costs but also curtail the ever increasing operational costs. Hence there is no doubt in saying that the future of storage and processing lies in cloud computing and virtualization provided by these data centers. Aiding enterprises, carriers and hosting providers with power, flexibility and economics of cloud computing infrastructure is CtrlS Datacenters headquartered in Hyderabad.

Founded by CEO Sridhar Pinnapureddy, in the year 2008, the IT infrastructure and managed hosting provider delivers infrastructure-on-demand services with automatic scaling of applications, thus exploiting the key benefits of cloud computing. Additionally, with a combination of highest uptime SLAs, low latency networks, 20 percent savings in energy consumption, CTRLS provides benefits to clients with improved business performance, cost effectiveness, and elimination of capital costs required for IT operations. This flexibility also includes security, cost stability, and enterprise-grade performance of a dedicated private datacenter. Based on these factors, the company offers its niche cloud products-CTRL4C and MyCloud.

A four Copy Cloud: CTRL4C

CtrlS, catering to the needs of businesses which wholly revolve around continuity, compliance, customization and control, build a cloud suite that has been built to combat the 4 ‘C’ factors that are key to effective business management. The Four Copy Cloud, CTRL4C is built on the practices mandated by NYSE and RBI for 100 percent data availability and accessibility by provisioning 2N+N network, making it disaster proof. Governed with unique features such as complete compliance and customization, the product offers complete control over IT operations. Thus, with Tier 4 DC offering 99.995 percent infrastructure uptime, it provides the very foundation of the 4C cloud.

MyCloud

Moving on, the company aids enterprises who are on the lookout to harness the power of the RISC, by providing scalability and flexibility of a cloud infrastructure, through MyCloud. With MyCloud, companies get instant deployment of infrastructure for critical business applications or automation projects with ensured cost savings as MyCloud slash Cap-ex to zero. MyCloud also offers capacity on demand with any component mix, be it backup and storage or application and server hardware.

In addition to Ctrl4C and MyCloud, the company further provides certain cloud services for each specific cloud domain, specifically, private cloud, real cloud and the enterprise cloud. In the Private cloud through its range of hypervisor platform, aids companies in meeting the hardware requirements which have been coupled with security and stability. While most customers fall behind in finances while adopting the private cloud, CtrlS, with its cost effective structure provides an advantage. The company further provides a multi-layered management model with its Real cloud, offering a choice in OS images, together with unmatched connectivity and near instant scalability. Companies hence put up and manage applications with ease. Finally, with Enterprise cloud a complete authority is provided to oversee collective resources with use on-demand. Thus, individual elements like memory and disk space are easily scaled and commissioned, making operations live on-demand.

Array of Security Measures

Even though customers benefit from the cloud, security issues are always at the back of their minds. CtrlS averts the concern with its 4C architecture by integrating a list of modules for compliance with an array of security measures. Offering security on a packaged basis (Silver, Gold, Platinum), the company’s security measures range from SSL Encryption, DDoS protection, Web Application Firewall to Host Based Intrusion Detection Systems. Additionally, the Gold and Platinum customers benefit from managed services aligned with the security operations center for proactive monitoring.

Expertise in DRM as an Emerging Differentiator

Moving ahead, the company also boasts of expertise in DRM, through its Disaster Recovery on Demand and Zero Data Loss solutions. CtrlS aids enterprises to bounce back from a disaster, ensuring speedy recovery through its DR on Demand product. With individual IT disaster recovery plans coupled with pay-per-use solutions and negligible cap-ex on disaster facilities, CtrlS makes recovery simple and economical. Taking DR on Demand forward is Zero Data Loss, enabling safeguarding of data by surpassing the Security protocols setup by the Exchange Board of India (SEBI) recovery point for exchanges and depositories.“With CtrlS’s cost effective Zero Data Loss, you can have all the advantages of building your own infrastructure at the fraction of the cost and in almost no time,” says Pinnapureddy.

CtrlS with its secure and fully redundant networks, offering 99.995 percent uptime with zero data loss proves to make a distinction from other competitors in its space. Certified as the Tier 4 datacenter and leveraging over with its 5 ‘9’s capable cloud, CtrlS further plans on building its 4C platform with added ‘control’ capabilities making it user friendly. By providing a rich API aligned with an external SLA management, user experience and provisioning systems, the company continues to offer security, cost stability and enterprise-grade performance creating a robust cloud infrastructure that guarantees success for the enterprise.

Courtesy: https://www.cioreview.in/magazine/CtrlSProviding-Continuity-Customization-Compliance-and-Control-in-the-Cloud-IZNY355416412.html

Data Center Infrastructure is the key to Cloud Service Availability

Cloud computing services are basically provisioned in data centers. Organisations while planning to adopt cloud computing systems must ensure to evaluate the data center which provides the underling foundation and infrastructures for a cloud service model. Tier 4 standard data centers are ideal for clouds because they provide adequate redundancy and fault tolerance to ensure service uptime and zero data loss which is important for cloud service availability.

Widespread interest in cloud computing systems among IT circles is fostering the evolution of different infrastructure models, service levels, and application platforms. Basically cloud computing is a model or infrastructure that provisions resources dynamically and makes them available as services over the internet. Cloud models and services can be accessed by organisations by availing resources as appropriate to satisfy their IT needs. Cloud service levels include Infrastructure as a service (IaaS), Platform as a service (PaaS) and Software as a service (SaaS). Cloud computing models are classified as three major types’ namely private clouds, public clouds and hybrid clouds.

Cloud service infrastructures have the ability to scale up or down in terms of storage, compute, and network depending on usage. Organisations view the cloud as a viable alternative to outsource their entire IT infrastructure primarily due to cost savings in terms of capital and operational expenditure. Many organisations have adopted CtrlS cloud model(s) in their business operations and are able to realize business advantage. Cloud computing services are available with Data Centers (DC) in different variants to fulfill organizational business needs. An organisation planning for adopting cloud computing model for their IT operations must ensure to critically understand the architecture of DC from where cloud model is availed.

The key criteria for evaluation include:

  • The underlying infrastructure
  • Redundancies
  • Connectivity
  • Uptime
  • SLAs
  • Services
  • These six areas must be considered by organisations from the perspective of cloud capabilities for continuous service availability and reliability. The above criteria are explained in a bit more detail to provide further understanding on existing cloud capabilities available with CtrlS Data Centers.The underlying infrastructure of DC plays an important role in cloud computing because when business grows the infrastructure has to accommodate increasing volumes of data and network traffic. The increasing surge in online transactions both by users and businesses require a cloud infrastructure to handle high volume data growth in terms of storage, network and processing. Most organisations have stringent policies on data privacy. CtrlS Data Centers offers private cloud models for businesses and organisations. Private cloud models offer fully secured data network with robust security features to protect information from falling into wrong hands. The cloud infrastructure is fully flexible, it allows users (organisations) to provision and monitor their resources themselves with automated metering service. CtrlS DC infrastructure is fully equipped to handle high volumes of data and perform complex processing on them without affecting efficiency and performance for users.Redundancy in DC is a measure of fault tolerance and also classifies the data center standard. DC standards are basically classified between Tier 1 to Tier 4 standards depending on their power capacities and their ability to quickly restore operations in the event of outage or in the event of component failure. CtrlS data center operations handle lot of mission critical data used by enterprise organizations. Hence the infrastructure cannot afford to experience any type of systems failure. CtrlS DC is built to fulfill Tier 4 standard where each component in the data center is provided with adequate backup components thus ensuring zero outage. Tier 4 data centers have the ability to respond automatically to any kind of failure or hardware malfunction. Hence failure on any one component does not affect other components in the infrastructure thus ensuring zero data loss and zero downtime. Organisations desiring to adopt cloud computing must check for redundancy in DC which has an effect on cloud service availability. Availability is a critical business need.

    Connectivity refers to the network connections on how the components are connected with each other to send and receive data in the DC. DCs are driven by consolidation, virtualization and adaptive architectures that enable flexible visions such as IT as a service, cloud computing and autonomic computing. I/O is a key differentiator because connectivity encompasses many components such as switches, routers, gateways and backbone networks and is measured in terms of throughput and bandwidth. CtrlS cloud models are virtualized to support Ethernet and Fiber channels while each virtual machine (VM) is viewed independently for its configuration. VMs are stored in centralized storage which separates the VM from a single physical server. In order to support multiple VMs in the data center the network infrastructure must provide reliable, flexible and secure data transport. CtrlS data centers are equipped with switching architectures to deliver low latency, throughput and high speed inter connects to support cloud models for efficient transport between servers, storage and end users.

    CtrlS DC is built on Tier 4 standards to ensure fault tolerance and provide guaranteed 99.99% data center uptime. This is an important Service Level Agreement (SLA) metric in terms of service availability and quality of service guarantee. SLAs are defined for the services available in cloud computing models. The user (organisation) may choose the right amount of resources in the cloud and adhere to the corresponding SLAs that define with each resource. For example, SLAs are defined specifically for resources such as storage space, backup, network bandwidth, number of VMs used, etc. SLAs that define security, data privacy, firewalls, uptime, etc are common to all users. The organisation must ensure to define SLAs to be specific, measurable, achievable and timely and most importantly there must be no room for any ambiguity for both cloud service provider and users. CtrlS SLAs are defined to revolve around performance metrics that meet business needs for users availing cloud services.

    CtrlS DC provide additional services and features that include different levels of security, firewalls and intrusion detection systems to mitigate any types of attacks and intrusions. This ensures the entire cloud model fully secure. Further users availing cloud models from CtrlS benefit from a wide range of services such as automated monitoring, UI for resource provisioning, zero downtime, zero CapEx (capital expenditure), etc. Tier 4 standards provide the much needed fault tolerance to ensure high availability at all times.

    Data centers are the foundation for clouds. They provide the underlying infrastructure for clouds to run. Data centers are built with thousands of servers, storage disks, switches, routers and other components to provide security, virtualization and application resilience. In a cloud models users normally look for scalability, reliability and service availability at all times. CtrlS cloud is available for enterprises either big or small. Organisations availing the cloud can benefit immensely in terms of speed and efficiency to generate business value.