Month: January 2016

The development of IT has transformed the way organizations do business, enabling businesses to connect with their customers in many new ways, cost-effectively and efficiently.

In particular, Amazon Web Services (AWS) are one of the leading cloud providers that help businesses to adapt to a world of increasing competition and changing consumer demands. Specifically, AWS helps to drive business value in various ways, including increasing flexibility and mobility, scaling with business growth and reducing costs.

Flexibility and mobility

One of the main advantages of cloud computing at large is the flexibility to work from any location, at any time.

Employees can gain access to work documents through the cloud on various devices and work on them wherever they may be located. Employees can also coordinate better on projects, as they can share documents with one another in the cloud.

Moreover, the scale AWS is able to achieve with huge number of servers provides you with enough capacity to respond to any hardware needs you may have in the future. For example, if you’re about to enter into a period of testing and development or expect to see a significant rise in traffic, with AWS you can simply spin up news servers On-Demand to handle your needs.

Scaling with business growth

An important benefit of AWS for businesses is its ability to grow with your organisation. AWS’ scalability means that you can provision as many or as few servers as you need.

So for start-ups, you may begin with a few servers but as time goes by and your business grows, you can provision as many servers as you need from AWS.

And for larger business, if you decide to expand your business overseas and require servers closer to your market, AWS’ global infrastructure is able to cater for your needs. AWS operate 32 availability zones around the globe housing numerous data centres, enabling you to host your applications on servers around the world and provide a speedy service to your customers, with low latency.

So with AWS, you can adapt your cloud computing strategy to ensure your business grows.

Reducing costs

Lowering costs is a common objective for most organizations, but finding ways to do this can be quite difficult.

But AWS offers a number of options to help you to reduce your business costs, including offering Reserved Instances (RI). With RI’s, you reserve EC2 capacity for 1 or 3 years, allowing you to gain cost-savings of up to 75% compared to On-Demand instances.

With RI’s, you can either pay the entire fee upfront, pay partially upfront and pay the remainder in monthly instalments, or pay entirely in monthly instalments. With each of these pricing models, you are able to achieve a lower effective cost-per hour of provisioning servers compared to On-Demand instances, ultimately helping you to achieve lower costs.

Ultimately, AWS is able to drive value for businesses through increased flexibility and mobility with access to files, scaling up or down in relation to your business needs and reducing costs.

Compliance is an issue that regularly comes up when a business is considering moving to the cloud. For some industries there are strict regulations and compliance rules that need to be kept to, and cloud computing doesn’t always fulfil the requirements.

Luckily, this is changing and more cloud service providers are now recognising the issue and finding ways for companies with regulations and compliance requirements to use the cloud.

For some businesses, if they have to jump through hoops to use the cloud in compliance with set rules, they won’t bother adopting the cloud. It becomes too much hassle and too slow a process to see the benefits.

Of course, if they were to actually go ahead and adopt the cloud, they could start making use of the benefits and advantages that different cloud services offer, from scalability to cheap server provisioning.

Data storage and security is often an area that stops or slows down the adoption of cloud computing but there are new ways to use the cloud and adhere to set rules.

The hybrid cloud is one option. This allows a company to use mixed cloud services between a private and public cloud set-up. Sensitive data could be kept on the private cloud whilst applications and websites could run on the public cloud. The advantage of this solution is that a company can take advantage of public cloud benefits, such as auto-scaling to allow for extra website or application capacity but still keep the compliance sensitive data on a private cloud.

With a hybrid cloud set-up, the servers can work together as if everything is hosted in the same place whilst still keeping to regulations and compliance rules.

Amazon Web Services are also offering newer server provisioning types such as their Amazon EC2 Dedicated Hosts, which is a dedicated physical server that is only used by one business. One of their aims with this type of server provisioning is to address businesses with compliance requirements.

Some cloud service providers are also providing documentation to help businesses adopt the cloud but with a set-up that helps meet compliance requirements.

Even with the right server set-up, access control is still something that needs to be considered with compliance requirements. A business must be able to prove the levels of access that each user has and how those users and levels are controlled.

In order to do this, a business needs to ask the cloud service provider if they can provide the necessary information to show the different user access levels.

Security is of course an absolute priority. If you are hosting data on cloud servers, you need to ensure that it is all protected and secure and in line with compliance requirements.

When a business provisions cloud servers, something they need to think about is data location. Depending which compliance requirements and regulations they must keep to, businesses have to consider where their data is being stored when they spin up a new server.

Some companies are required to keep European customer data on servers located in Europe. This might add complications and different costs, but doing so can prevent penalties.

It’s easy to see why compliance and regulation can slow the adoption of cloud computing and possibly puts some businesses off adopting the cloud altogether but with new provisioning options such as hybrid cloud and dedicated hosts, companies can use cloud servers whilst adhering to set rules!

Although the term ‘on-demand’ is linked with many different types of technology, the interpretationthe service remains mostly the same – to access what you want, when you want it. Within the world of Amazon Web Services (AWS), an on-demand cloud would either be associated with one of the three EC2 pricing structures offered by Amazon, or as a specialised feature provided by an AWS cost reduction tool.

AWS On Demand Cloud

Out of the three pricing structures offered by AWS, the on-demand plan provides I.T teams with the mobility to spin-up servers immediately when needed and pay for EC2 capacity by the hour – so users only pay for what they use.

In this respect, Amazon’s delivery of EC2 functionality clearly produces the immediacy that users expect from an on-demand service. But more often than not, after a period of prolonged usage and uncoordinated management, EC2 costs can incrementally increase when servers aren’t switched off properly. This prompts many businesses to consider the use of AWS cost reduction tools which can switch Amazon EC2 Servers ‘On’ and ‘Off’ when needed, to lower AWS bills and provide more budgeting resources for I.T teams.

It’s at this point when the understanding of what ‘on-demand’ means starts to blur when compared against terms such as ‘automation’, creating some confusion with customers on what to expect from on demand cloud computing.

On Demand Computing & Cloud Automation

Many AWS cost-saving solutions often allude to features similar in functionality to on-demand, but do so through less than clear and unambiguous product descriptions.

For example, the sentences below may sound familiar:

• Reduce costs by starting and stopping your EC2 instances automatically – only when you need them
• Automatically starts and stops EC2 instances
• Automate tasks such as “Start and Stop an EC2 instance”

On a first read-through you probably won’t notice anything wrong with these descriptions, but on closer inspection, we can see that they’ve been carefully worded to emphasize the impression of ‘on-demand’ capabilities.

What do we mean? Well, they may not say on-demand directly, but if you look at these sentences again you’ll probably notice that the term ‘automatically/automate’ has been used several times across them. This in turn creates an expectation with the reader that an automated action is likely to produce an immediate or sharpish response.

For example, we often associate the term of ‘automatic’ with that of a functioning automatic door – it opens immediately when needed.

However, in the case of many cost-saving server tools, ‘automate’ simply means to implement a server schedule or threshold that will ‘automatically’ control when a server switches on/off – at another point in time. Which means that the promise of “Start and stop EC2 instances – only when you need them” is actually a misrepresentation and technically misleading.

So in comparison, while the term ‘Automatically’ means to trigger an on/off response to a predetermined event, ‘On Demand’ control looks to provide an immediate response to an unscheduled event, which can provide operators with the crucial agility to quickly stop idle servers, and lower their AWS costs as a result.

A True On Demand Cloud

True on demand cloud control from an AWS cost-saving tool should look to deliver the same functionality as Amazon’s own interpretation – an immediate response. However, while Amazon’s on-demand approach certainly does what it suggests, it does have limits on how quickly you can perform an action, and where you can perform it from.

For example, because AWS is usually accessed through a browser on a work computer, you’d still need to be sat at the desk in the office before you could spin-up any servers for the day’s work ahead.

You could argue that by using a smartphone web-browser you could navigate around this issue and access AWS – and technically you’re correct. But given the small screen and inaccuracy of a touch screen on the move, it’s certainly not a solution conductive for quick and easy AWS access. It also doesn’t really support the proposition of on-demand immediacy.

As such, the next step for on-demand control would be to utilise an app that can boot-up servers quickly and easily, so users don’t have to wait to access the main AWS console before they can work.

So for team members travelling on business, giving remote demonstrations, or staff in different time zones, having a way to remotely start EC2 servers without being at your desk could prove invaluable. When fully realised, true real-time ‘on-demand’ control like the feature offered by Cloud Machine Manager and its Mobile Starter App (iOS and Android ready) allows users to dynamically switch their Amazon EC2 servers ‘On’ or Off’ with the press of a button…and not worry about large server bills mounting up!

For many organizations, be it a start-up or a large corporation, a key strategic goal is often saving money. But finding areas within the organization where savings can be made can be very tricky.

The solution might not necessarily be to reduce budgets, but to find ways to be more efficient with the budget you currently have. For example, when we look at the IT department, adopting a cloud infrastructure is often the first step to increasing efficiency in both costs and departmental processes i.e. reduced spending on infrastructure and improved access to information across users.

And there are ways that the IT department can continue to stand out as an efficient member of the organisation. One option for AWS EC2 users is to consider using Reserved Instances (RI). Essentially, with Reserved Instances you can reserve EC2 computing capacity for 1 or 3 years, enjoying huge cost savings.

Reserved Instances pricing models

Reserved Instances come in 3 different pricing models; All upfront, where you pay for the entire instance fee (1 or 3 years), Partial Upfront, where you pay a partial amount of the fee for the reserved instances, supplemented by monthly payments to cover the remaining fee, and No Upfront, where you pay for your instances in monthly instalments.

So in addition to enjoying the benefits of launching instances whenever you experience spikes in activity, you can also achieve cost-savings of up to 75% compared to On-Demand Instance pricing. So by paying upfront or in monthly instalments, you can gain a significant reduction in the hourly cost of running your servers.

Cost savings of Reserved Instances

For example, for standard Reserved Instances, if you ran an m4.4xlarge server in US East (N. Virginia) on a Linux server, the On-Demand price would be $0.958 per hour. But if you were to pay $4828 All Upfront for a 1-year term, your effective hourly price would be $0.551, offering a 42% saving over On-Demand.

And your savings over On-Demand increase significantly if you were to purchase your Reserved Instances on a 3-year term. By paying $9387 All Upfront, the effective hourly rate drops significantly to $0.357, providing a 65% saving over On-Demand.

If you decided to go for the No Upfront payment option, you could pay $480.34 per month over the course of 1 year. This equates to an effective hourly cost of $0.658 per hour, providing a 31% saving over On-Demand.

This is just one example of how Reserved Instances can help you to save money.

Cost savings by location

Although Reserved Instances are a great way to reduce your costs, you need to be aware of the specificity of cost savings by AWS region.

If we take the previous example of an m4.4xlarge server in US East (N. Virginia) on a Linux server but place this server in US West (Northern California), the On-Demand hourly cost goes up to $1.117.

The All Upfront cost for a 1-year term then increases to $6655, with the effective hourly rate going up to $0.759. Although you’re still making a saving, the saving over On-Demand now drops to 32%.

Equally, if you chose the No Upfront cost path, the effective hourly rate is $0.907 with a saving of 19% over On-Demand – a lot lower than the 31% your competitors over in Northern Virginia are saving.

Don’t get me wrong. From these examples, it’s clear to see that Reserved Instances are a great way to make cost savings across the globe. But it’s important to consider the idea that the location of your servers can significantly impact the amount of savings you can make.

Ultimately, Reserved Instances are a great way for organizations of all sizes to reduce their cloud computing costs and increase their efficiency. So rather than having to face cuts to your budget, it’s worth considering how you can integrate the use of Reserved Instances into your cloud computing infrastructure.

When you’re not in control of who uses AWS within your business, trying to get an accurate picture of your companies’ server usage can often prove difficult. For example, if you don’t work in I.T, but are a manager in charge of multiple budgets and receive an unexpectedly large AWS bill, you’d probably want to know how this happened.

But such is the complexity of AWS and its breakdown of AWS billing that analysing an increased server bill may present you with more questions than answers.

Who’s using AWS within your business

The gatekeepers overlooking the day-to-day management of your complex AWS operations are often developers, sysadmins, and DevOps teams working within your I.T department, who use AWS to control when to ‘spin-up’ Elastic Cloud Compute (EC2) servers for application testing.

They’ll also decide upon what level of power the server needs to complete its task and how long it needs to remain active when compared against a development schedule.

When managed correctly, cloud costs should remain proportionate against server usage, but problems arise when too many servers are spun-up, left active, and not turned off accordingly – mainly due to human oversight.

More specifically, for companies using AWS and an Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) model, improper usage of cloud-compute resources or ‘wastage’, will develop from actions that often involve over-provisioning of servers, server demand fluctuation, and ‘sprawl’ from uncoordinated AWS user management.

All the while, the longer your pay-as-you-go (PAYG) EC2 servers remain ‘active’, but not switched off, the more they increase your AWS bill!

How to manage AWS cloud costs?

To gain the upper hand in server management you need to remove the complexity of AWS, by manoeuvring around the technical barriers that prevent you from getting involved.

How you can manage AWS – and save money

Aside from switching careers to I.T, managing your companies’ AWS usage will require some ‘outside the box thinking’ – particularly from a cost-efficiency point of view.

One solution would be to change your organisation’s cultural approach to correctly managing servers. Alternatively, you could integrate third-party cloud management Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) into your company’s AWS server routines. Both approaches can help you to manage your AWS usage more efficiently.

Cloud management software allows you to side-step the technical hurdles of AWS, by presenting end-users (like yourself and developers) with intuitive and web accessible controls to overcome negative resource management (wastage), and allows operators to quickly and efficiently manage EC2 servers in as few actions as possible – and save money!

Some key features of cloud management software include:

1.    Scheduling servers in advance for optimised instance deployment
2.    Reactive automation that turns servers off based around demand thresholds
3.    On-demand control to instantly turn servers on/off from any geographic location
4.    Cost savings summaries and server utilisation reports

Additionally, where management software can also provide support is with centralising AWS user management through permission based controls. This allows you to segment and group which users have access to specific servers, and means that team leaders like yourself or others, can coordinate and limit accessibility to resources – without the need for coding or technical know-how!

Tools that provide such functionality either do as a cost-effective ‘core’ service, or as part of a larger service offering that includes more analytical support and runs natively on your own PC. While definitely useful, if you consider the latter option, just be careful that you’re not over-provisioning your resources as before.

To truly reduce your AWS server costs, the trick remains to find a software package that can dynamically work with any type of agenda. Not just solely around pre-planned schedules that get left behind in light of new projects, or become difficult to deactivate when urgently needed.

Ultimately, for you to save money, servers need to be switched off when inactive, and it needs to be easy for operators to do so. As such, there’s a key balance between choosing software that prioritises user-management against effective cost savings practices that’s easy for operators to adopt and produces a long-term return on investment (ROI)!

How you can get started

If you’re interested in utilising AWS cloud management software, you’ll probably need to get a few key people on board first. In which case you’ll need some evidence to support your cost-savings claims, so it might be worth conducting some Google research into available tools, and perhaps analysing their features in relation to your requirements.

If you’re wondering how much you could benefit from cost-saving software today, why not try our savings estimator to calculate your potential savings. All you need to know is your server type, size and amount of instances, and how much usage goes towards either production or development testing. Simple!

In the past, it wasn’t all that often that you saw a small, possibly start-up business with the same software and technology set-up as a large organisation. The reasons vary but pricing and enterprise-centric software is one factor.

There are some software companies that effectively price themselves out of reach for small businesses. They aren’t interested in serving a company who want a cheap package where they won’t make a huge return on investment.

This is, however, beginning to change. With cloud applications that scale in price based on a company’s size and what they’re after, it’s becoming more common to see a small company and a large organisation using similar software applications and services.

From using cloud storage to office applications the gap between enterprise targeted software and software for small companies is closing.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a great example of this. The pricing strategy of AWS allows any company, no matter their size to purchase the cloud server capacity they need at very good prices.

A start-up can spin up a couple of small or medium servers for all of their development needs and at the same time a large business might spin up 1000 large servers for their development needs.

But AWS goes a step beyond just being able to cater for different sized businesses – it effectively encourages growth within those businesses. By having a pricing model that allows flexibility and scalability as a key part of the offer, businesses can choose to use AWS in the confidence that as they grow, their hardware basically grows with them but with a minimal cost.

This model works for all sizes of business. For larger companies, a new product or project can prompt the need for more servers, whether it be for development and testing, storage or to run a live application and AWS allows them to scale up.

In the past, we might have seen service providers that choose to cater for a small business by offering them a small business package that isn’t suitable for a large business (a lack of scalability and flexibility). Or the opposite, service providers working with only companies over a certain size as they could offer them a more comprehensive deal that sees a larger return on investment.

As we have seen with AWS, the cloud is breaking these conventions and it means companies all over the world, no matter what the size, use the same software.

As cloud computing and cloud applications continue to expand into businesses of all sizes, many are taking on a model that allows for scalability. Pricing models are becoming more similar to those we see from Amazon.

The key to Amazon being able to cater for companies of all sizes is potentially down to price. A small company can afford to spin up a server and use it instead of pricey internal hardware. Amazon may not make a huge return on investment from a small company but because they are appealing to all, they are likely to be making a lot from the large organisations who provision hundreds and even thousands of servers that are on all of the time.

Interestingly though, there is the possibility that Amazon begin to make money from the start-ups and small businesses over time as they begin to grow and can continue to grow with AWS. As they provision more servers, Amazon begin to see a larger return on investment.

It’s a model that we could see from many other service providers in the future as it becomes a way to cater for and handle companies of all sizes and not put themselves out of reach from smaller companies or vice versa.

As cloud computing becomes more prominent as a business tool, so to do other variations and forms of cloud and server hosting. Using the cloud for day-to-day business functions has many advantages from flexibility to mobility to scalability.

That’s all great. It’s becoming a key business tool and it feels like one day, no business can afford not to have the cloud. But it still has downfalls and for some businesses there are still better or comparable solutions.

Particularly businesses and companies that have strict compliance and regulations they have to stick to when it comes to data and where the data is used, the public cloud isn’t necessarily the answer. There are more options than ever before to help get around compliance issues, one of which being Amazon’s Dedicated Hosts.

Bring On Hybrid Cloud

A company might have dedicated hardware and use cloud services as well, increasing the flexibility of their IT infrastructure and giving more deployment options.

Using a hybrid cloud environment, a company could choose to use a private and public cloud set-up for different things, or they could choose to combine them within the environment to create a more scalable and flexible computing solution.

Benefits of Hybrid Cloud

Cost Benefits:

The hybrid cloud achieves cost benefits associated with the economies of scale of public cloud computing and allows companies to only scale when they need to using the public cloud whilst keeping data secure on a private cloud.

Scalability: 

A general benefit of cloud servers is scalability as it allows a company to scale their server capacity up or down as it’s needed. Using a hybrid solution, a company can rely on cloud servers when they need more server capacity. If, for example, a company is testing a new application and is expecting spikes in usage and utilisation, a hybrid environment set-up can rely on cloud servers to handle the extra spike in usage.

This way, a company only has to scale up when they need the extra capacity rather than invest in a new hardware server.

Security 

Security and compliance still remain a business risk when investing in cloud computing. A hybrid cloud environment reduces the business risk, as not everything has to be stored in the public cloud and can be stored on a company’s private cloud whilst being compliant with any regulations.

This might include keeping data or payment information on a private cloud solution but using a joined up hybrid cloud environment to run applications that link to this data.

The Increasing Demand 

Last year, it was reported that 82% of enterprises have a hybrid strategy and that was up from 74% the year before.

It is likely that the trend has continued to increase as it solves some of the business issues with the public cloud but remains a flexible and arguably cost effective solution.

As well as the cost benefits, scalability and security, the hybrid cloud can be set up in a way that aids development and production for faster times to market of products and enhanced agility with the ability to move between private and public cloud set-ups.

It’s debatable as to whether the public cloud infrastructure is ready for all types of business to start using it but with the hybrid cloud solution, it’s a step forward that allows companies of varying sizes to take advantage of public cloud services and benefits without all of the business risks.

There are also various cloud management tools that can be used to boost your cost savings in the cloud. Cloud Machine Manager is a cloud management tool that allows users to gain on demand control of when servers are turned on or off. By serving switching idle servers off, users can achieve huge cost savings that can be reinvested in purchasing bigger and better servers.

To find out how much you could save with Cloud Machine Manager, check out our savings estimator.

When an organization moves to the cloud, it’s easy to get caught up in all of the possibilities it provides. But it’s important to spare a thought for making sure that your cloud computing activity stays within the bounds of the law – something that is often overlooked.

With various cases of privacy issues cropping up including the Wikileaks case, issues with data privacy on Facebook etc. businesses need to take extra care when deploying their cloud computing activities.

This includes thinking about where servers are located and even taking steps to boost your cloud security.

Data Location

One of the advantages of migrating to the cloud is that servers can be hosted off-site, saving businesses money through reduced maintenance costs.

But the particular location that these servers are located also impacts upon the legality of use of the data contained in these servers i.e. data sharing across particular regions. What you need to remember is that wherever the servers that host your data are located, the laws of that particular country govern your data.

For example, data protection within the European Union (EU) requires that whoever the data belongs to must inform anyone whose data will be hosted on that server, that their data will be hosted overseas.

If we look specifically at the United Kingdom (UK), UK data protection laws apply to companies with data that is hosted on servers in the UK, even if this particular company operates overseas. Under section 5(1)(b) of the Data Protection Act (1998), the storage of any data on servers hosted in the UK must comply with UK laws.

So if you plan to host data on servers located outside of your main area of operations, it’s important to consider the laws of the hosting country, especially if these servers will be processing any sensitive data.

Microsoft vs US authorities

One recent issue concerning access to data on servers concerns Microsoft’s cloud service and their refusal to provide US authorities with emails regarding a criminal investigation from a Hotmail account that is being hosted on a server in Ireland.

Microsoft are arguing that the US has no right to access these emails, as access to these emails should be governed by Irish laws which would deny the US authorities access to these emails.

Although a Judge in New York last year told Microsoft to release the emails to the US authorities, Microsoft have argued that this violates the privacy of US citizens if governments are able to simply access data from servers whenever and wherever they wish.

The point of contention is the Stored Communications Act (1986), which has led to varying arguments over the extent to which the act applies to the application of US law, overseas.

This is an example of how access to data can be complicated by arguments around the interpretation of the law and its applicability to cloud servers.

Data Security

An important issue that you need to think about when meeting cloud regulations is keeping data secure in the cloud. The last thing you need is a breach of the data in your cloud servers and facing the possibility of having to pay out huge sums of money in compensation.

So what can you actually do to reduce the chances that your servers will breached? One method of keeping your data safe is using two-factor authentication, a useful and popular method of protecting your data.

Two-factor authentication works by requiring the user to combine passwords with another form of identity authentication. For example, a bank card may be one factor, and the PIN is the second factor to gain access to the account.

Overall, cloud computing regulations differ markedly across the globe with different countries applying different laws to the processing of data in servers based overseas. But what’s important for organizations who are hosting data on servers overseas is that they take a good look at the legal ramifications of any cloud breaches or mishaps in a particular company. But to start with, it’s never a bad thing to increase your cloud servers’ security, perhaps through two-factor authentication.

In business, many organisational decisions often come down to a cost-benefit analysis – if I spend this much, how much will my organization benefit? And in today’s economy, businesses have to make tough decisions regarding particular investments as they can’t always guarantee a good enough return.

But this is where the utilization of cloud computing can help to boost your return on investment. By migrating your activity to the cloud, you can take advantages of lower costs, more efficient resource use and scalability to increase your return on investment, for example, in building a new application.

Lower Costs

One way in which cloud computing helps to increase your ROI is through decreasing a number of your costs, including capital and operational costs.

With cloud computing, you no longer have to purchase servers for use in-house, resulting in lower data centre costs that help to boost your return on investment. So rather than purchasing huge servers that take up space and take quite a while for the IT department to configure, you can enjoy provisioning servers for a low cost based on the economies of scale that cloud providers are able to achieve.

Another cost saving benefit that contributes to higher ROI when provisioning servers from cloud providers is that you avoid maintenance costs that you would otherwise have to pay with in-house servers. So instead of paying energy bills and security staff to maintain the cloud data centre, cloud service providers take on these costs.

Building apps in the cloud

As part of the service of provisioning cloud servers, you can also check to see how many CPU’s are currently in use to support a particular application, how much this costs and if you are making use of these resources efficiently.

But what you often find with cloud computing is that projects can be brought to market at a much faster pace compared to when using in-house servers. So projects that used to take 4, maybe 5 months to complete, now take less than a month in the cloud.

And the more applications that you build in the cloud in a shorter space of time, the more your return on investment increases as you make more efficient use of resources.

But there are a few considerations you need to make, such as thinking about the type of applications you’re building in the cloud. Not all applications can operate at their best in the cloud, and to do so often requires optimization of servers, which can cost money and time.

So you need to consider whether it’s worth moving all applications to the cloud, or moving the ones that are more compatible with the cloud, in order to maximise ROI.

Scalability

One of the greatest advantages of cloud computing is the ability to rapidly scale your cloud servers up or down based on assessments of how much computing capacity you really need.

Provisioning servers from cloud providers is easy and quick, meaning you don’t lose time in application development and can ensure a quick time to market for your product.

And through a pay as you go model, the scalability of cloud servers means that you only pay for what you use. So where you have periods of low activity, you can scale down your server provisioning compared to times of high activity such as new builds – only paying for what you use.

Ultimately, scalability helps to boost your time to market without incurring extra costs, helping to increase your return on investment.

With cloud computing, organizations are able to alter their business model to increase efficient use of technology that translates into a higher return on investment. This includes lowering costs through provisioning servers off site, building applications efficiently in the cloud and making use of scalability to only pay for the computing capacity you use.

And today, there are a range of cloud computing management tools that help to boost the efficiency with with you operate in the cloud.

For example, Cloud Machine Manager (CMM) is a cloud management tool that gives you on-demand control of when your servers are turned on or off. Using CMM you can ensure that your servers are switched off when they’re not use, saving you a whole heap of cash as well as ensuring that you’re using your resources efficiently. And with all the money that you save, you can reinvest in a bigger and better server, earning yourself a free upgrade.

See how much you can save with our savings estimator.

If we consider mobility to be free movement and the ability to move and then apply this to business, we might see business mobility as the ability, or more optimistically, the freedom to work anywhere.

Imagine having no commute every morning because you’re working from home. Gaining an extra hour every morning to sleep, exercise or walk the dog. Taking the luxury to make a proper breakfast rather than a bite to eat and a coffee at the office.

Mobility changes how a business works. Workers are merging their personal and professional lives with the ability to check emails on the go (such as in the pub on a Friday night!), work from home without the difficulty of communication and even work when travelling and on holiday as if they were in the office.

But mobility isn’t about just extending the working day for as long as your phone is switched on, nor is it about making people work through their holiday abroad. It’s about creating a strong workforce without the need for them to be on your office doorstep or re-locate.

Good talent is hard to find for many industries and through mobility, new opportunities arise to hire remote full-time workers.

It’s up to the individual business to decide if mobility is the right thing for their company.

Cloud is driving mobility

Cloud is a leading factor in making business mobility possible as with the use of cloud services, there is no differentiation between an employee working at home or in the office, or at least there shouldn’t be.

Apps and tools such as remote desktop allow an employee to access everything they need on the go and away from the office. Secure cloud storage makes file access and database access easy for those working away from the office.

Mobility isn’t new in the world of business but before now, it has been more difficult to operate, communicate and run smoothly.

The cloud is developing this. There are multiple applications that can be used for instant messaging and sharing of files with colleagues as well as Internet based voice and video calling. The applications available today make it possible for co-workers to be half way around the world from each other and work together as if they were sat next to each other. Arguably, this wouldn’t be possible without cloud applications.

The ability to drop a file into a shared cloud storage application and have someone else immediately download it is not different to the way we once passed a USB Memory Stick or CD across the office.

There are of course weaknesses to relying on the cloud for mobility and for it to work perfectly, there do need to be some protocols and rules in place.

Security and Internet Failures

For businesses that rely on the Internet to use applications and get work done, then remote working can become difficult. The average home network isn’t always reliable with consistent speeds and they are known to have outages, which might take days to fix. That’s not very helpful if a project is due in two days time.

Security is also a concern for home networks. Where an office might have proper online security in place to reduce cyber attacks and hacking, home networks might not be so protected and when working on and downloading sensitive information, there may be some compliance and regulation issues.

Whilst the Internet infrastructure might be seen as a weakness to mobility, there are ways around this. For security, using a VPN might help to side-step some of the issues. As for the Internet service being used, it is either a case of upgrading the home Internet to business standards for remote working or just hoping problems won’t be encountered too often.

Either way, business mobility is developing with the help of the cloud and cloud applications and it is becoming a viable business strategy for many companies. As it allows new talent to be brought into the business without the need for them to live nearby or even in the same country and allows people to relocate and work from wherever is most convenient for them.

It’s even possible that conventional offices will become a thing of the past as business mobility continues to develop.

Mobility in the cloud has now reached the point where mobile applications can be used to control various elements of cloud computing. For example, Cloud Machine Manager is an on-demand cloud computing tool that allows users to instantaneously turn servers on and off at the tap of a button.

By using CMM to turn servers off when they are not needed, you can enjoy significant cost savings, savings of which can be used to reinvest in provisioning bigger and better servers.

To find out how much you can save with CMM, check out our savings estimator.