By Mohtasham Mohammed, Project Leader, CDK Global
December 9 2020: Dynamically changing business environment requires robust infrastructure, lightning-fast processing speeds, enormous storage capabilities, and data managing.
This would necessitate one to have the latest edition equipment like database servers, routers, switches, Storage Area Networks (SAN), load balancers, and firewalls. Upgrading to the latest models every few months would incur additional costs, deployment of the new device models, migration of current services, and downtime needed to perform all the above activities.
While all businesses must have the latest cutting edge technologies, they need to be wary of the cost incurred, the sustainability of the solution implemented long-term reliability, and its scalability. Cloud Technologies prove to be an apt solution for these ever-changing sinusoidal needs.
Cloud computing is a means of handling, storing, and processing data on the Internet. Cloud Technologies can be broadly categorized into three types
Why Cloud Computing? Express computing speeds, vast storage capabilities, and customized segregated databases from cloud providers like Amazon Web services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud come along with traits like: Provisioning of additional resources on a need basis, Resilient Networks with Data Centre redundancy, Shared resources and Scalability.
Online hosting and storage facilities in various data centres across the globe from cloud providers allow automated data backup without any physical hardware device being needed at the customer site and effective means of disaster- recovery. In certain parts of the world that are more prone to natural calamities like hurricanes, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions, cloud platform is the apt answer as there is minimal infrastructure at the local site and most of it is present in the data centres in different geographical locations.
The agile nature of the cloud allows businesses to be able to expand rapidly, also letting the use of different flavours of technology, depending on business need. With cloud offerings there isn’t any need to buy new hardware as the flexible nature of the cloud allows you to increase the size of storage space and availability of different database servers to choose from. Enhanced ability to back up and migrate data eliminates all the challenges encountered in all hardware-based traditional setups.
Scalability has proven to be the ace. Once we know that a solution works for a business then they would like to scale up quickly. Pay as you go and on-demand services, ability to add infrastructure resources from wide-ranging options available within a specific technology work-frame makes cloud the future. Businesses keep adjusting to the client's needs and market requirements. If a business doesn’t require the same amount of storage space etc. the storage size can be reduced easily on the cloud.
In today’s economically turbulent times value for money is key to help businesses thrive and in turn deliver exceptional service to their customers by providing robust infrastructures and networks. SDWAN which is a SaaS model of cloud technology can provide optimal usage of two ISP circuits at the same time by checking the performance on both the circuits every few milliseconds and sending the traffic via a circuit that is likely to give better performance. This was not possible with the traditional routing and switching model. Other circuits will come into play only when one of the circuits is completely down. But with SaaS (SDWAN) both circuits are made use of simultaneously.
Predefined plugins give you various options for the server you want to deploy, they come along with a base package that has basic features enabled to use over a set period. Pay as go options make it a great value for money from a business perspective. Pay as you use, flexibility to change configurations/specifications based on business needs as you progress and not getting stuck once you invest in hardware assets/licensing that you purchase with the device is an exciting advantage.
No maintenance cost, easy implementation, cost-effective solutions, optimal usage of resources, zero downtime and non-requirement of migration to new hardware are other advantages.
Availability of a graphical user interface (GUI) allows extensive performance details of any specific applications/ services used at any given time frame. Triggered updates/notifications allows any issue to be quickly narrowed down and fixed. The flexibility and scalability that the cloud provides make it a futuristic and efficient platform in the technology world for any business.
Slowly and steadily everything is set to move to cloud in the days to come.
CDK Global, is a leading global MNC specialized in providing automation solutions in terms of software to auto dealers.