(Neelesh Kripalani, Sr. VP & Head- Center of Excellence – Clover Infotech)
The Coronavirus pandemic has compelled organizations to shift to a remote working model overnight. As a result, organizations are frantically moving towards cloud computing and software products. As per a new IDC report, 64% of organizations in India are expected to increase their demand for cloud computing, while 56% are expected to demand for cloud software to support the new normal. To adjust to the new normal, organization need SaaS-based collaborative apps to ensure on and off-site presence at all the times and zero-disruption to business. Since businesses have realized the limitations of physical infrastructure, pay-per-use public cloud model is witnessing an accelerated demand.
However, it is important for organizations to consider the below mentioned factors while choosing a public cloud.
- It should support open source technologies – Cloud based open source technologies enable organizations to create and deploy applications with speed and consistency, thereby fostering innovation. Adoption of open source software enhances an application’s interoperability with other enterprise solutions. Open APIs allow quick and transparent integration of mission-critical applications and systems.
- It must provide tools for managing Kubernetes – Businesses should opt for public cloud platforms that provide the tools for managing Kubernetes for massive scale and workload diversity. Kubernetes in the recent years has emerged as a cornerstone of the cloud computing landscape.
Kubernetes is a container orchestration platform, enabling organization to deploy, manage and scale application container workloads. It enables agile development, deployment and maintenance of operations workflow that can run on-premises and across different cloud providers.
- It should offer robust cyber security – Organizations are increasingly taking their business-critical workloads to the cloud as it offers them high efficiency and productivity, while substantially reducing costs. Although cloud computing provides numerous benefits, it also raises a series of cyber security threats. Hence, it is essential for organizations to ensure that their cloud provider offers comprehensive cyber security policies consisting of guidelines, controls, procedures and technologies that work together to protect cloud-based systems, data, and infrastructure.
- The cloud should be hyper-scale ready – To survive the current pandemic, organizations need the hyper scale computing architecture that enables flexible provisioning – both upscaling and downsizing – basis the needs of the business. It involves hundreds of individual servers that work together via a high-speed network. This enables businesses to quickly scale their networks in a controlled, secured environment to accommodate the increased workloads due to a remote working model.
The acceleration towards public cloud has got a huge fillip due to COVID-19. The scenario today leaves little doubt on the need to move to the public cloud wherever possible. Organizations that would take the step now while keeping the above considerations in mind and hiring a cloud consulting and implementation partner to charter their roadmap would emerge from this scenario with a much desired competitive edge.
