By Sam | May 23, 2013

5 Things You Need to Realize About Credit Union Cloud?

Have you been exploring cloud, but don’t feel like it is living up to your expectations in concept? This post is for you.

There are a widely varying number of things that different people may want to know about the cloud, but there are also important general concepts that have to be accepted. These are not the only five items. There could literally be hundreds, but we are just going to start with five here today.

• The Cloud has Not Yet Been Perfected

Ads from the big boys (IBM, Microsoft, Etc) would have you think that when you go to the cloud everything will be perfect all the time. This is not the case. A good cloud provider should provide you a robust platform, based on quality infrastructure, housed in well planned and equipped data centers. All of these factors should improve your IT experience

• The Cloud may not be Perfect, but…
  

While the cloud (along with nothing else in this world) may not be perfect, it is probably better than what your organization has running in its IT department. The reason for this is the basis of the Cloud business model…spend more money, but provide enough resources to run several IT departments, then sell those services. By this definition, cloud providers should be providing you with a greatly enhanced level of performance, security, reliability, and redundancy.

• The Cloud is Secure
  

It can be scary getting rid of all of your hardware and putting it into a data center to be managed and protected by a third party, but a quality cloud provider should be using the model mentioned in the previous point and be running higher end security hardware/software than the typical IT department would spring for.

• The Cloud is All About Your Internet Connection
  

Once you have moved out all of your IT hardware, you are left with the responsibility of maintaining your internet/network connection to your provider. While a lot of Cloud Providers will also offer managed connectivity solutions, the point is that when an internet connection is your only link to your resources you better have a backup!

• There is a Big Difference Between your DR Plan and your Provider’s DR Plan

You may be used to planning out how and in what order to recover your IT resources when planning our your DR plan, but the process changes dramatically once you go hosted. You will be able to reference your provider’s redundancy, DR plan, and other certificates, but your main DR planning task becomes, “How am I going to get my people internet?” A quality cloud provider should have multiple data centers running redundant systems that communicate with each other. This is the first, main line of defense. Traditional DR planning is also essential, but the idea of a dedicated, Tier 1-3 data center is that small interruptions do not grind the whole system to a halt (Power outage, internet connection cut off, etc)

Related Content:

Top 5 Mobile Device Features for Hosted Virtual Desktop

Credit Union Cloud – Overview

Top 5 Hosted Virtual Desktop “What-Ifs”

Have Questions? Contact Us: