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With over 90% of enterprises already using a cloud service, more and more of the infrastructure that supports applications, websites and services are now in the cloud. This includes database environments. This post was written to help business decision-makers understand what’s under the hood when it comes to cloud database technology. The goal is to help you make more informed decisions and avoid costly mistakes as you develop and execute your cloud strategy.
There was a time when on-premises hardware and software options were the only choices a business had for building out a backend environment. You needed to make all the decisions about the hardware, operating system, configuration settings, usage plans, backup strategies, and more.
If your infrastructure is not robust enough for your needs, the environment suffered. Organizations across every industry, from the government to healthcare to financial services, are discovering and using the benefits of moving business applications to the cloud.
This means offloading the cost of software maintenance and management to a third party and just paying for the software’s use and functionality. The ability to lower costs, simplify IT management, and establish a more flexible and scalable architecture are compelling reasons to move beyond on-premises legacy computing. But the decision to migrate to the cloud is just the beginning, and the choices only become more complex from there.
Cost savings – A typical enterprise cloud solution leverages pay-as-you-go pricing, so businesses only pay for the resources they use. In addition, businesses that move to the Cloud can avoid many or all of the up-front costs of
developing similar capabilities in-house. As a result, IT expenses for enterprise cloud adopters are often lower,
easier to calculate, and easier to predict.
Security – With enterprise cloud, organizations can access security tools like system-wide identity/access management
and cloud security monitoring. They can easily implement network-wide identity and access controls. Cloud service
providers also play a role in supporting data security in public and private deployments.
Flexibility & Innovation – Enterprise cloud computing offers businesses the flexibility to dynamically scale their resource
consumption up or down as needed. This minimizes the amount of upfront capital cost associated with launching a new product or testing a new service and removes barriers to innovation. Just Like all the other solutions offered by cloud computing, a cloud database can also be scaled to meet the growing needs of the organization.
Traditional databases are familiar territory for most organizations with an on-premises IT infrastructure. In the on-premises model, you typically have more control over management decisions because you own the hardware infrastructure, including servers and the platform. You handle all of the configuration options and choose the operating systems to support, but you’re also responsible for troubleshooting maintaining all aspects of the backend environment.
As a result, traditional on-premises database management can be expensive and time-consuming, and the responsibility to maintain application uptime and security puts increasing pressure on IT organizations that may already be stretched thin.
On the other hand, a cloud database allows you to access servers and hardware via a hosting platform, which is typically offered as a service and resides offsite. You don’t have to worry about purchasing and maintaining hardware, you simply pay to access your data from the cloud in a way that meets agreed-upon service level agreements (SLAs)
between you and the cloud provider.
Although there are a few types of deployments, most organizations choose between private or public cloud options, each of which has pros and cons depending on your business requirements.
For many organizations thinking of moving to the cloud, the choices can be daunting. There are so many types of cloud models, how do you know which is the right one for you? This section explains some of the differences between the main cloud types.
Public clouds are the most popular model of cloud computing services because they offer a variety of choices to meet the needs of organizations of all sizes and industries. Public cloud infrastructure is shared by multiple organizations and owned and operated by a third party such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud, or Microsoft Azure, which takes care of the overall management for customers.
Public clouds are easy and cost-effective to implement and provide fast provisioning. Because you can pay as you go to meet business demands, it’s a low-cost option for deploying applications. Public clouds are best suited for organizations with predictable computing needs, or who need additional support and expertise to address changing business demands.
While public clouds provide reasonable security, they may not be ideal for organizations with strict data security and compliance requirements In a public cloud, most of the setup options are preconfigured, and critical services such as automatic backups are taken care of for you.
This means you have less control over your cloud infrastructure, which may make it more difficult to meet certain compliance regulations. However, shifting maintenance responsibilities to a third party can also provide greater peace of mind for organizations looking to offload essential database management services.
Private clouds are exclusively owned and managed by your company but can be hosted internally or externally by a third party. Because they are exclusively owned, the computing resources are isolated, delivered via a secure private network, and not shared with other customers, unlike the public cloud model.
As a result, private clouds tend to be more secure than public clouds. A private cloud is a preferred option for organizations that have stricter security requirements and need more control over the cloud infrastructure, data management, application hosting, and uptime requirements. For example, some security-conscious organizations, such
as research institutions, may opt for private clouds because they offer a similar degree of control and privacy as an on-premises database.
It’s important to note that private clouds are more expensive than public clouds, especially for short-term use. They may be difficult and costly to scale to accommodate more users and increased demand, which can create performance issues that require additional resources and expertise to manage.
Hybrid cloud architecture is a mix of public and private clouds. They are typically integrated in a way that allows applications and data to share the resources between public and private cloud infrastructures. This allows organizations to reap the advantages of each type of solution; they can offer the security and control of a private cloud without sacrificing the scalability, performance, and cost control benefits of public cloud computing.
For instance, organizations with a hybrid cloud can host their high-security IT workloads in a private cloud but leverage
public cloud resources to handle occasional demand spikes. As a result, scaling to provide additional computing capacity does not incur the additional costs typical in a private cloud environment. Instead, it is delivered as a one-time or short-term service through a public cloud.
Best of all, a hybrid environment seamlessly integrates public and private clouds so they can leverage the advantages of each one and run workloads where they perform optimally. Although hybrid clouds are ideal for organizations that need the flexibility to continually switch between cloud service models to meet business needs, hybrid clouds can become an expensive option. They can also be challenging and complex to integrate because organizations lack direct control over public cloud infrastructures.
The term multi-cloud is often confused with hybrid cloud, but in reality, they are two different types of deployments. As noted above, a hybrid cloud is the integration of a public cloud with a private, on-premises cloud data center.
A multi-cloud deployment refers to the use of multiple public cloud providers, such as AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud Platform. The trend toward multi-cloud use has been driven by the desire to avoid dependency on a single cloud provider (i.e., “putting all your eggs in one basket”). In fact, by 2022, IDC predicts that over 90% of enterprises
worldwide will be relying on a mix of on-premises/dedicated private clouds, multiple public clouds, and legacy platforms to meet their infrastructure needs.
Given the benefits of multi-cloud, this trend is not surprising. With this type of cloud deployment, companies can avoid vendor lock-in while benefiting from cost savings, better performance, a lowered risk of distributed-denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, and improved reliability — which are essential advantages to staying ahead in today’s highly competitive digital economy.
A well-designed multi-cloud architecture allows organizations to quickly shift their computing load to a different
provider in case one has suffered a DDoS attack or fatal performance outage. With multi-cloud, organizations can achieve a level of resiliency not available with a single provider, which is a huge business advantage.
In addition, multi-cloud deployments can be highly customized. Some organizations choose to host different IT workloads with different providers depending on their particular requirements. Although most large enterprise IT organizations have shifted to a multi-cloud strategy, it’s important to note that architecting and operating these deployments can be a highly complex undertaking.
Multi-cloud deployments are frequently handled by managed cloud service providers, especially in organizations that do not want to bring the required expertise in-house.
A community cloud is yet another type of cloud model and a variation on the private cloud model. Community clouds are designed to serve a limited number of individuals or organizations and are an attractive cloud option for companies with high-security requirements such as financial, healthcare, or legal firms.
A community cloud is jointly governed, managed, and secured by either the participating organizations or a third-party managed service provider. Participants can manage joint projects that benefit from sharing community-specific software applications or development platforms.
However, even within a community cloud, each organization can maintain its own private cloud space to host particular applications or workloads while still meeting the security, privacy, and compliance requirements of the community. All the different types of cloud platforms mentioned above can be used to deploy a cloud database solution. Contact Musato Technologies to learn more about our cloud database solutions and other cloud services designed to boost your business productivity, profitability, and growth.
Siphumelele Sipika is the Chief Operation Officer (COO) and the Administrator at Musato Technologies. She also holds the position of the Director. She is a visionary leader and a technologist who is driven and passionate about digital transformation and the role of ICT that plays in improving economies and communities throughout Africa and the globe at large.
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