Friday 23 August 2013

Why Australian companies are becoming innovators in cloud solutions

The Australian region has become an influential innovator in the cloud computing sector in recent years. This is not by mistake, but rather by design of how the market in the region operates. In an effort to curb the surge of the Asian economies that surround them, Australian companies have had to look for ways to reduce their expenditure while maintaining the same level of service delivery. This led them to the discovery of the immense potential of the private cloud service that cloud service providers were offering. They have, therefore, engineered a number of solutions in line with private clouds that have helped them increase their global market share.

First, the private cloud service has been used as the IT infrastructure of choice by a large number of Australian companies. They have innovated this into an IT architecture that businesses subscribe to instead of creating. They are able to deploy this solution in their day to day operations with a relative ease that has seen more and more of them adopt it. The beauty of this is that rather than being just end point users, they are part of the collaborative process to design solutions that they will end up using. The company that has adopted the use of a private cloud gets to be part of the team that designs the solutions. This allows them to add their input on what they would expect to be provided with in the final solution that they use.

Cloud computing has seen Australian companies significantly reduce their operating costs while keeping their IT infrastructure as modern as possible. This eases the cost of operations because they do not need to pay for the cost of acquisition or maintenance. Since the solution is administrated from the service provider end, they are able to reduce the staff that they need for the IT department. Furthermore, they also get access to the best expertise in IT and related matters that money can buy.

The Australian market has seen a proportionate increase in the number of companies that offer these services. These companies have set up their operations in the country as they seek to take advantage of the favorable investment regulations. The terrain of the country is also flat and generally low lying. This makes it remarkably easy to setup cloud facilities, and since the power costs are low, the overheads are low. Companies that have used the cloud have seen these benefits translated in terms of their bottom line performance.

Aspects of your cloud that should be managed by the provider

The increase in the number of companies that are using cloud services has led to the need for the creation of an adequate cloud management system. Cloud services are the newest form of computing infrastructure. They have transformed computing into a service that is delivered to consumers on demand through the internet. This has had immense appeal to the business community who needed a way to decrease and streamline their expenditure on information technology infrastructure. The majority of the businesses that use cloud services, however, do not realize why they need cloud management. This is more so true for businesses that traditionally operate within the IT sector. They tend to make the assumption that they are perfectly capable of managing the cloud internally. This has several disadvantages from increasing the cost of personnel to reducing the efficiency of the cloud. There are certain aspects that are best managed by the service provider.

The first of these aspects is the security that is used to protect the cloud. Cloud security services are best provided by the cloud service provider for a number of reasons. One, the cloud service provider is usually the one who also creates the application programming interface that the cloud operates on. This means that the person using the cloud is best served in a scenario where they allow the creator of the API to design the security to guard it. This is because the service provider will be more intimate with the weaknesses of the cloud that need shoring up. Cloud security services are a much more cost effective option for the business because they get the best expertise for a relatively low cost. They are also guaranteed of the level of service that they will get in terms of security as this is stipulated in the service level agreement that they sign with the cloud service provider.

A second aspect that needs management is the creation, installation, and deployment of applications on the cloud. The applications that are designed to be used on a cloud are built on the API. This means that it is better to pick an application developer with an innate understanding of the workings of the API you are designing for. By allowing the cloud management service to handle this aspect, the company ensures that they will get the best level of performance that is possible on the cloud solution that they intend to use.