Are you ready for the new normal? Cloud 2.0 has arrived as I predicted in 2014 What was my vision then has finally come into its own.
Originally Posted on June 24, 2014, by Steve Ferman
I can safely say that every conversation I am having about how the cloud can be used today is a reminder that the hot topic is no longer about security and performance. Rather, it’s about how they should be using it to further their business objectives.
We started moving our clients to the cloud over 6 years ago. It started like a lot of others, building our own — Virtual Office Recovery Center — in our data center, we called it VORC because IT guys love acronyms. We built it to have spare virtual machines with the ability to restore client data to these virtual machines nightly. In the event of a disaster, we could restore client functionality with a Front End Server, FES, like a Citrix or Terminal Server. This is also known as a ‘warm site’. While this was functional it was not automated and I knew we had to find something that was. So we began the process of building our first live cloud environment.
We built our Business in a Box, BIAB as we called it, by clustering three VMware environments and hosting our client’s applications and data in our datacenter. This too had its issues. At the time Exchange was not multi-tenant and while scalable this solution would be very costly due to continuous hardware upgrades.
That’s when we found a back-end provider who, at the time, was one of the few that had a truly functional and scalable hosted cloud solution for Virtual Desktops and Servers. We were off and running. After a few years of growing the business, we began to notice a lot of slowness and degradation. What we had tried to avoid by not owning our own hardware, our provider fell into the same challenges we tried to avoid. As we evolve, we learn and grow. Now we use utility computing. This is like the consumption of IT resources as you need them rather than over purchasing resources to plan for future needs. We then coupled that with multiple front-end technologies to deliver a fully scalable solution at a very affordable price.
2.0
Cloud 2.0, as we like to call it, is out and on the rise. More and more people are in the cloud. Storage services alone have over 550 Million users. It is projected that this number will climb well over 900 Million and beyond!
I am trying to stay ahead of the curve. Cloud 2.0 is it. Especially since the pandemic of 2019 hit, and the adoption of the remote workforce was made into a mandatory business requirement. Allowing people to work from home is the new normal. Employees get on earlier and stay on longer with fewer workplace disruptions. I am not saying people should all work remotely. However, maybe 3 days in the office and 2 home per week is a solution. Or, whatever mix works for your company. Maybe I should call this Cloud 3.0…….
