Investing in Current Infrastructure or Migrating to Cloud-Based Managed Services?

Featured article by Orlando Bayter, Founder and CEO, Ormuco

In 2013, Scandinavian research group SINTEF announced that 90 percent of all data ever created was generated during the two previous years. That time frame continues shrink as the rate of data creation increases exponentially. Mobile devices, computers, gaming systems and even your car all produce terabytes and terabytes of data. Under these conditions, every business needs to think seriously about their cloud options. There’s simply too much data for a company to effectively manage on outdated systems alone. We are quickly moving into the Post-PC era. While computers will remain the primary interface for employees, the data, computations, storage, and processing will occur externally in the cloud. Enterprise software from five years ago can’t handle the surge of data and solutions are quickly moving to the cloud to store, manage, compute and backup vital information at lightning-fast speeds while avoiding the heavy costs and headaches of owning and managing complex commodity hardware.

Luckily, we are living in the golden age of the cloud. A recent independent report from Gartner shows that hybrid cloud adoption it set to triple in the next three years, with on-premise expected to fall by 18 percent.Shared hosting, or cloud computing, have ensured that individuals and companies can rely on effective, off-site, secure, scalable data solutions. In fact, the process has become so seamless that individuals often don’t even know they are using the cloud. This is the case with both gamers and users of online video-streaming services, to name only two. In both cases, preferences and actions are stored on the cloud in the blink of an eye and in real time. Businesses, however, have more specific needs. A one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t cut it. So this begs the question, what should a business look for in a cloud-based solution?

Today, the cost of running a private cloud-based managed service is equal to or lesser than investing in your own infrastructure. The private cloud has unrivaled performance, security, scalability and flexibility. Furthermore, unlike traditional on-premise infrastructures, clients with private clouds can develop new applications and evaluate newer business models while bursting onto public cloud-based services without affecting critical services running on the private cloud.  As a result, business applications can be developed and tested faster and more accurately (in the public cloud), while production is achieved at lightning speed (migrating apps back to the private cloud). In essence, the barrier between private and public clouds has disappeared and allows clients to manage and configure their infrastructures and services within minutes.

As data creation continues to grow with increasingly heavier workloads, investing in commodity hardware and infrastructure means continued pressure on resources to just maintain the same amount of business. Those costs include new hardware, space, utilities and manpower to manage. Moving to the cloud with a managed service provider removes the burden from your business while allowing seamless scalability to meet growing demands without facing hiccups every few years as you reach your network’s limits. Otherwise, you face paying for the luxury of having too much infrastructure or feel the pain of having too little. True optimization is only available with the pay-as-you-go service capabilities of the cloud.

Likewise, protecting data from external threats is a must and is handled better when you reduce the chance for human error. With cloud capabilities, businesses have the ability to automate security measures to protect their company’s and their customers’ vital information regardless of where their employees are located when connecting to the network.

Another factor to consider is whether your systems and internal IT can manage large-scale systems errors, which can put your business at a complete standstill. Securing your data is vital to ensuring systems don’t suffer blackouts, and that important transactions or work isn’t loss due to inconsistent backups. The cloud expands an organization’s capabilities for data security, allowing for up-to-the-minute redundancies across multiple geographies and seamless data recovery so, no matter what happens on the backend, business continues as usual for employees and customers.

Lastly, an organization must consider whether its current systems and IT simplify processes or create extra work and delays. A CIO must look at the overall cost to a business to continue to invest in on-premise infrastructure vs. adding cloud solutions that reduce stress on systems and provide scalability for the future. To get the best of both worlds, a managed service provider should be vendor-neutral, capable of pulling value from and integrating existing commodity hardware in your organization while offering a cloud system that can deliver critical business services.

Whether you choose to re-invest in your own infrastructure or migrate to cloud-based managed services, you need to make sure that your decision will enable you to have a reliable, secure, cost-effective and scalable infrastructure to meet your company’s growth and the increasing demand from heavier data workloads in the next few years. At the end of the day, you just want your services to work where and when you need them at the lowest possible cost.

Orlando Bayter was only 24 years old when he founded Ormuco in 2008, after having worked in the field for many years as a consultant. In 2009, only one year later, he had positioned his company at the top of its sector by becoming the fifth Canadian supplier to obtain a license from the CRTC to provide Internet services, telephony and television across Canada. In 2010 he founded, Voix Video Data to deliver cabling and electrical solutions and in 2011, he founded Virtual V Data to provide near shore outsourcing services. Orlando Bayter holds a BA in Electrical and Mechanical Engineering and Master’s Degrees in Electrical Engineering and Management. Always striving to provide the best service possible to his clients, he is an integral part of complex telecom solutions, sharing his views and knowledge. His total commitment to quality is expressed by the attention with which he ensures the well-being of his employees and of his clients.