One of the most popular technology topics in the business world over the past five years has been the cloud. The cloud in terms of the business world refers to the ability to store, run, and operate applications and files over the Internet through public access servers or privately owned and managed servers.
In addition, the cloud represents a swing in the traditional thought process by most businesses and organizations concerning the way that IT related operations are handled. For many decades, computer operations were primarily designated as in-house operations. The equipment was purchased by the business owners, and operated by their in-house staff.
However, over the years because of various reasons, the preferred method for IT operations has moved towards outsourcing IT operations to an outside third party vendor. Some of the main reasons for this decision by most businesses was the cost associated with purchasing IT equipment, maintaining IT equipment, and paying an in-house IT staff.
Recently, as cloud computing has become a popular method for running and managing IT related operations, outsourcing is still the preferred method for many businesses. However, instead of having a third party vendor run and manage IT operations with equipment purchased and owned primarily by the businesses, cloud computing allows the ability to receive IT outsourcing assistance without the burden of being financially responsible for the equipment. With cloud computing, the equipment such as servers is owned, ran, operated, and managed by the third party cloud providers.
This provides businesses the opportunity to reduce IT related cost significantly by avoiding the cost associated with purchasing IT equipment. Also, the cost regarding IT upgrades, maintenance, and repairs are avoided. In addition, the ability to use a cloud provider for IT related operations also removes the direct and indirect cost associated with hiring and maintaining an in-house IT staff.
Even though cloud computing has become a popular method for businesses regarding IT operations, there are several issues that businesses should consider related to cloud computing. One of the major issues is data privacy in the cloud.
The reason why data privacy should be a concern for all businesses is that cloud computing places organizations in the position of depending totally on the cloud providers for data security because the cloud providers own, run, maintain, and manage the servers used during cloud operations. Moreover, there is no set security measures placed across the board for cloud computing security. Each cloud provider has its own security measures, which means that cloud security various greatly from one cloud provider to the next without a true way for organizations to know how vulnerable their data is to outside threats.
Data security is crucial in today’s business world because of the daily attacks that are attempted by various hackers on a variety of businesses both large and small. If data security is breached, businesses can find themselves in a vulnerable situation both financially and publicly.
As an attempt to manage potential problems regarding data security on the cloud, some businesses have chosen the option to use dedicated host servers that are offered by cloud providers instead of the commonly used shared host servers.
Dedicated host servers are servers set aside to be utilized by one organization. This allows all the resources on the server to be used specifically by the one organization, which improves all IT related operations. In addition, with a dedicated host server, customized options can be supplied by cloud providers such as increased levels of cloud security. Moreover, the cloud has allowed businesses new options regarding IT operations; however, serious consideration to issues such as data privacy in the cloud should be addressed before placing organizational data on the servers ran, maintained, and operated by cloud providers.
About Guest Author
Brenda Panin is an Australian blogger from Brisbane specially interested in cloud computing. Brenda is a regular contributor to several tech blogs. In her free time she reads about virtual machine hosting and new applications for android.
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