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Is the Cloud Answer to Everything?

The cloud is a popular topic, with big and small organizations looking at cloud solutions to increase efficiency, reduce costs, and accelerate new projects. A recent survey found that 66% of businesses currently use the cloud in some capacity. But is it the answer to everything? Is the cloud the best option for your business? The quick answer is No! – but there’s more to it than that. Read on to find out if the cloud is right for you and your business or if another solution might suit you better.

We are excited to bring you another much-requested video on our series Uptime with Richard Luna. We are discussing Cloud and Is the Cloud answer all your problems. Watch the video to understand it in detail.

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Why the Cloud is Such a Big Deal

If you think back to when you were a child, the internet probably wouldn’t have even been on your radar. It’s only been around for a few decades, so it’s not surprising that it’s still such a new concept, even though it’s become a massive part of our daily lives.

When you hear the word cloud, what do you think? Most people think of a massive server that holds all the data for an organization, storing it in a remote location. This is an oversimplification, but it gets the point across. As a business owner, you need to know what the cloud means and what it could mean for your organization.

For a good reason, the cloud has become a massive trend in recent years. It offers various benefits that traditional on-premises solutions cannot match. Hybrid cloud solutions, Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Software as a Service (SaaS), and Platform as a Service (PaaS) are just some examples of cloud offerings available to businesses. One of the significant advantages of cloud computing is the flexibility it provides. Businesses can choose between public and private clouds or even create multi-cloud environments that utilize multiple clouds to meet their specific needs.

Cloud solutions like IBM Cloud, and Protected Harbor Cloud can simplify management and reduce overhead costs, as businesses no longer have to worry about maintaining and upgrading their hardware or operating systems. Moreover, businesses can quickly scale up or down their resources as required with the cloud, making it a more cost-effective solution. These and other benefits of cloud computing have made it an attractive option for businesses of all sizes and industries.

Is the Cloud Right for You?

Whether or not the cloud is right for you depends on your business, needs, and how it aligns with your goals and vision for the future. If you’re unsure if the cloud is the right solution, consider the following questions: Is your organization ready for a significant change or transformation? Do you have a reliable and secure internet connection? Does your organization have a substantial amount of data? If you answered yes to one or more of these questions, the cloud might be your ideal solution.

Cloud computing services are viable options for businesses looking to modernize their IT infrastructure. However, choosing the right cloud solution depends on various factors, such as the business’s size, industry, and requirements. For instance, small business owners might benefit more from SaaS offerings that allow them to access the software through the cloud rather than investing in costly hardware and maintenance.

On the other hand, larger companies with complex IT infrastructure might find IaaS or PaaS more suitable, as they offer greater control and customization over the environment. Additionally, businesses with a hybrid cloud architecture, combining on-premises and cloud infrastructure, may require a hybrid cloud infrastructure to ensure seamless integration between the two.

Furthermore, choosing a cloud provider is also critical, and businesses must select a reliable provider such as Alibaba Cloud that offers high availability and scalability. Virtual machines and other computing services provided by the cloud can also be advantageous, allowing businesses to quickly spin up new resources or scale up existing ones to meet their demands. Ultimately, the decision of whether the cloud is right for you depends on your unique business needs and goals.

What Else Should You Be Considering?

While the cloud may be a good fit for your business, there are a few other things you may want to consider before making a decision. What are your security needs? If you’re storing data remotely, you must be confident that it’s secure. Being compliant with government regulations like HIPAA and GDPR is another critical factor. Finally, you’ll also want to consider your budget and ROI. If you don’t have the budget to use a cloud-based solution, you might want to look at other options.

Summary

The cloud is a popular solution for many businesses but isn’t the best solution for everyone. No single technology or vendor can be the answer to everything. Cloud providers are trying to solve different problems at different scales. As with any technology, the cloud has its strengths and weaknesses, and it’s essential to understand them before making decisions.

There are many Cloud service providers in the US. Among all, Protected Harbor was one of the top Cloud service providers in the US. Our cloud services include AWS Migration, Office 365 Migration, Google Cloud Migration, Hybrid Cloud, Private Cloud, and Dedicated Cloud Infrastructure.

If you’re still unsure about the Cloud or its features, contact one of our experts immediately. They’ll recommend the best-suited strategy for your business. We are also giving away a free IT Audit to help the company identify its weak points. Keep watching the video for more.

November 10, 2022 by Admin

CloudData CenterUncategorized

Understanding the Risks of Cloud Migration

Check Out Infographic

Understanding the Risks of Cloud Migration and Security Measures to Mitigate Them

Thanks to our experts at Protected Harbor, we’ve released a new infographic that can help your organization or business to reduce your cloud migration security risks. This infographic includes key security tips and advice to help you make the right cloud migration decisions. Download the infographic now to learn more! And don’t forget to visit our blog for more tips and advice.

As your organization evaluates cloud migration, it’s critical to understand the risks. Security is a top concern for many businesses, so before you move your company’s data and services to the cloud, you must understand how to mitigate any potential risk. Understanding cloud security risks are essential for an effective migration strategy. The first step in this process is understanding the potential risks of migrating your organization to the cloud.

After all, not every business can trust third parties with their data. But with the proper security measures in place, moving to a cloud platform can benefit almost any business.

Download our infographic to understand how to reduce cloud migration security risks in a quick overview, and continue reading the blog for more information.

What Is Cloud Migration?

Cloud migration is the process of moving an organization’s data, applications, and other business elements from on-premises data centers to cloud computing services. Several types of cloud computing are available, including public cloud, private cloud, and hybrid cloud, each with its own benefits and challenges. Cloud migration requires careful planning and execution to ensure that sensitive information remains secure and protected from data breaches.

Moving apps, data, and other digital assets from an on-premises data center to the cloud is also cloud migration. These may be programs that have been specially created for the organizations or ones that they have licensed from a different vendor. There are various methods for moving to the cloud, including:

“Lift and shift” refer to moving apps as-is.
Modifying applications slightly to facilitate their cloud migration
Application rebuilding or remodeling to make them more suitable for a cloud environment
Changing from legacy applications that don’t support the cloud to new ones that cloud vendors offer.
“Cloud-native development” refers to the process of creating new cloud-based apps.

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What is CSPM?

Cloud security posture management (CSPM) is critical to cloud migration strategies. It involves assessing and managing the security posture of an organization’s cloud infrastructures, including threat detection and data masking. CSPM helps organizations ensure their cloud resources are secure, compliant, and operating under the appropriate security controls.

One of the main benefits of cloud migration is the ability to take advantage of the scalability and flexibility of cloud computing services. Cloud resources can be easily scaled up or down as needed, allowing organizations to quickly respond to changing business needs. However, migrating to the cloud can also introduce new security challenges, such as the risk of data breaches and unauthorized access to sensitive information.

To mitigate these risks, organizations should carefully consider their cloud migration strategies and take steps to ensure that their cloud infrastructures are secure and compliant with applicable regulations. This can include implementing access controls, monitoring for threats, and regularly reviewing and updating security policies and procedures. By taking a proactive approach to cloud security, organizations can enjoy the benefits of cloud computing while minimizing the risk of data breaches and other security threats.

What are the Key Benefits of Cloud Migration?

The advantages of the cloud, which include hosting applications and data in a highly effective IT environment that can increase factors like cost, performance, and security, are the overarching goal of most cloud migrations.

Elastic scalability, a need to reduce costs or convert from a capital expenditure to an operating expenses model, and a requirement for new technologies, services, or features only available in a cloud environment are essential drivers for cloud migration.

The flexibility of corporate IT teams to deliver new services and expand the company to meet changing business requirements is enhanced by cloud computing, which is maybe even more significant.

Security Risks of Cloud Migration

Because cloud migration is susceptible to several attacks, careful planning is required. Sensitive data is exchanged during migration, leaving it open to attack. Additionally, attackers may obtain access to unsecured development, test, or production environments at different points in a migration project.

Plan your cloud migration efforts in advance of the following dangers:

Application Programming Interface (API) vulnerabilities: APIs serve as communication routes between environments. At every step of the cloud migration process, APIs must be protected.

Blind spots: Using the cloud requires giving up some operational control. Before migrating, check the security your cloud provider offers and how to enhance it with supplemental third-party security solutions.

Compliance requirements: Verify that your intended cloud environment complies with the necessary standards. This comprises the organization’s protocols for ensuring the security of cloud workloads, data, and access, as well as compliance certifications issued by the cloud provider. As part of the standards for compliance, all of these may be audited and will be.

Unchecked Growth: Moving to the cloud is a continuous process. The company will probably add more resources, use new cloud services, and add more apps after moving applications to the cloud. Once SaaS apps are up and operating in the cloud, it is normal to begin employing more SaaS applications. A significant operational problem exists in securing these new services and applications effectively.

Data loss: Moving to the cloud requires the transfer of data. If there are issues with the migration process, it is crucial to ensure that data is backed up. With rigorous key management, all data is transferred across encrypted channels.

Check Out Infographic

5 Ways to Mitigate Cloud Migration Security Risks

Here are a few best practices that can help improve security during and after cloud migrations:

Develop a Plan– Planning before migration and executing successfully is essential. Use automated tools and optimization to outline the expertise, resources, and tooling you need to start.
Start Small- To reduce the fear and accelerate cloud adoption, start with an automatic workload lift and shift over in small portions.
Leverage SaaS Adoption– Utilize your business units to promote cloud adoption by investing in Software-as-a-Service.
Set Security Standards– Develop baseline security standards by collaborating with your governance team.
Use Managed Services- Organizations should monitor their cloud security posture from the control plan to asset configuration. They can partner with a Managed Services Provider for efficient migration.

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Conclusion

Migrating to the cloud can be a great way to boost your company’s productivity and scalability. But it’s essential to understand the security risks first. The best way to mitigate these risks is to work with a reputable cloud provider committed to data security.

Having the right security practices in place for your team is also important. With the proper security measures, you can enjoy all the benefits of migrating to the cloud. That’s why we have created an infographic to help you out. Download today and get started with your cloud migration.

July 27, 2022 by Editor

IT ServicesTech Support

The importance of owning your remote servers and using a dedicated protected cloud.

If you’re a business owner, then there’s a good chance this question must have crossed your mind to own your equipment and servers. Just remember, “owning” your equipment doesn’t mean the computers and systems in your office. Likely, you are already using a hosting web service or server for your business needs. After carefully considering your unique business needs, it would be best if you decided between onsite or off-site servers. Read along, and we’ll make the decision easy for you.

Onsite servers to Off-site servers; The trend

In 2021 more than 50% of the organizations moved their workloads to off-site or cloud servers. Managed service companies (MSPs) and value-added resellers (VARs) are gaining traction with their one size fits all solutions. Keeping an onsite physical server and equipment and maintaining the infrastructure is costly. But there are other reasons motivating businesses to move to an off-site setting.

Onsite hosting has limited connectivity and accessibility than off-site hosting, which has unlimited capabilities.
Remote and geographic expansion are more realistic in an off-site and cloud environment.
The physical space of onsite housing servers incurs real estate and energy charges; off-site servers do not.
Storing your data in a colocation datacenter is cost-effective, removing the need for in-house IT costs.
The upfront costs of the physical equipment and server are significant for most businesses.

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These technology barrier costs are causing the shift to datacenter solutions or dedicated off-site servers. Put, a datacenter solution or dedicated server is an option dedicated solely to your business needs and purposes. No other individual can access the server; it’s your data in our datacenter.

A closer look at AWS servers

The most popular dedicated off-site solution is Amazon web services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platforms. But how do you choose what’s best for your business? They all follow the pay-per-user approach and additional services and products needed over time, adding to costs as you grow.

Since AWS dominates the field, we will focus on just Amazon’s platform. The first thing to consider is that “You want solutions, not a platform.” For example, Office365 is a solution to edit and create documents, while Microsoft Azure is the cloud platform that hosts 365 and other programs online. Thus Amazon is a platform – not a solution. Amazon gives you cloud space for rent, with unpredictable costs as your business needs rise and fall.

You will not see an automatic performance improvement when you move your company’s workflow and applications into AWS. For that, you would need a dedicated protected-cloud environment and an intelligent, distributed database. Just hosting your applications on AWS does not mean you will have the ability to use those programs and computing resources efficiently. You have to meet AWS system requirements; AWS does not have to meet yours. If you want data backups and recovery, you have to do it yourself.

With AWS, Azure, and other popular server options, you only get a Virtual Machine (VM) and a console to work from. It is your responsibility to manage, maintain, and secure that VM. For example, with AWS, someone has to customize the CPU utilization limits, check to ensure the Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) volume doesn’t hit the IOPS or throughput limits, and increase your read or write performance using parallelization. It sounds like more of a problem than a solution

Also, it has been proven that AWS cloud is not as secure as your datacenter. The world JUST experienced an AWS outage, interrupting the operations for thousands of people and loss of business downright. Not only do you lose flexibility and cost-effective scalability with AWS and Azure. But you lose the reliability and stability you thought you were getting with the Amazon and Microsoft name.

The bottom line is if you work with GPU, AI, or large data sets, you need someone to manage and personalize your IT infrastructure. Moving to a dedicated protected cloud solution lets you customize the server environment to improve AWS.

What is the alternative?

With a dedicated protected cloud, someone constantly monitors your private environment to make sure everything goes smoothly and is customized to the company’s requirements. Actual IT management means knowing when to optimize the storage and network layers to support your extensive data set. Unlike AWS and Azure who will slow down your traffic moving between VM’s –unless you pay additional fees – we can help optimize applications to respond to requests made to these large data sets in a remote environment, with no extra cost.

Before anything, we always have an expert examine the applications a business uses, how exactly employees use those applications in a daily workflow and finally review the data loads involved to figure out what needs to be done to make this run properly. Having a team that understands and develops personalized Technology Improvement Plans (TIP) gets your business more bang for the buck than AWS or on-prem.

This is the gist of overall performance, Bottom line? You want to opt for a service that offers 99.99% uptime with reliable IT support. We improve the environment to give you the best performance for your workload. Not the opposite way around. For example, for a single client, we don’t have to tune the S2D. But we do because we have it and want to give them the best performance possible.

Check out our post on how dedicated servers are a safer alternative. But that doesn’t mean you are 100% safe from attackers. To ensure the safety of the data, consider providers with built-in features like Application Outage Avoidance (AOA) and complete network monitoring to handle issues before they are critical…

So, despite all of the above facts, if you’re still crazy enough to go with AWS cloud, that’s your decision. Irrespectively, if you’re not terrified by the lower and fixed price complete solution, best infrastructure setup and system monitoring, or our team doing the magic for your business, in that case, we at Protected Harbor will be more than happy to give you all the solutions you need.

December 22, 2021 by Editor