The Future is in the Cloud
Co-working spaces and activity based working have been huge buzzwords recently, as more organizations are creating such spaces and work culture in an attempt to improve productivity, employee health and welfare. A common excuse I hear from organizations eschewing this sort of mobile-workplace setup is the inability to bring work away from their workstations.
24 May 2016
Co-working spaces and activity based working have been huge buzzwords recently, as more organizations are creating such spaces and work culture in an attempt to improve productivity, employee health and welfare. A common excuse I hear from organizations eschewing this sort of mobile-workplace setup is the inability to bring work away from their workstations. Many industries require large amounts of data for day-to-day work, or the ability to access private information, that is limited heavily by being required to use company computers or being on a corporate network.
With cloud computing, corporations stand to gain much more in productivity.
Cloud Computing, or what’s known as on-demand computing, is a type of internet-based computing that provides shared processing resources on-demand. Cloud computing allows you to access your data wherever and whenever, allowing you to maximise the benefits of activity-based working.
There are 3 main options in the cloud, public, private or hybrid.
Public clouds are owned and operated by third-party service providers. Customers benefit from economies of scale because infrastructure costs are spread across all users, allowing each individual client to operate on a low-cost, “pay-as-you-go” model. Another advantage of public cloud infrastructures is that they are typically larger in scale than an in-house enterprise cloud, which provides clients with seamless, on-demand scalability.
It is also important to note that all customers on public clouds share the same infrastructure pool with limited configurations, security protections and availability variances, as these factors are wholly managed and supported by the service provider.
Private clouds are built exclusively for an individual enterprise. They allow the firm to host applications in the cloud, while addressing concerns regarding data security and control, which is often lacking in a public cloud environment. There are two variations of private clouds:
On-Premise Private Cloud: This format, also known as an “internal cloud,” is hosted within an organization’s own data centre. It provides a more standardized process and protection, but is often limited in size and scalability. On-premise private clouds are best used for applications that require complete control and configurability of the infrastructure and security.
Externally-Hosted Private Cloud: This private cloud model is hosted by an external cloud computing provider. The service provider facilitates an exclusive cloud environment with full guarantee of privacy. This is recommended for organizations that prefer not to use public cloud.
Hybrid clouds combine the advantages of both the public and private cloud models. In a hybrid cloud, a company can leverage third-party cloud providers in either a full or partial manner. This increases the flexibility of computing. The hybrid cloud environment is also capable of providing on-demand, externally-provisioned scalability. Augmenting a traditional private cloud with the resources of a public cloud can be used to manage any unexpected surges in workload.
On the question of cloud security there will always be challenges for the cloud, particularly public However, even in highly regulated industries like the financial sector, estimates are that 30-40% of data may be capable of being stored in the cloud.
I previously had the pleasure of being stationed in Europe, where our CBRE EMEA offices were well equipped with virtual machines powered by the Cloud. This was immensely helpful as my position required me to travel frequently, and yet still be able to access company specific data. With a virtual machine, I could work from anywhere – using my personal laptop or mobile device to access my files. This gave me unparalleled flexibility – I could be talking to a client dialling through my office landline, or connected to a conference call on my work servers all while sitting on a beach in Hawaii enjoying a Pina Colada (I wish!). That is the brilliance of virtualisation of a work station, you don’t have to be in your office, and no one will know.
The potential of the cloud is limitless. In fact, many start-ups are embracing this type of technology and virtual machines in order to do-away with the overheads and costs of establishing offices, especially in cities like Singapore and Hong Kong where real estate is expensive.
It has been said that “Asia is the Edge”, and this is not a reference to U2! Analysts claim that by 2020, the Cloud market is expected to reach $89.9 billion, with demand mostly coming from the Asia Pacific region (40%), surpassing North America and Europe. Singapore is at the forefront of this wave, with large public cloud companies like Google, Microsoft and Amazon setting up their data centres here.
However, it is not all peaches and rainbows. The sheer distance and geographic space that Asia occupies throws up connectivity challenges; particularly around latency (the time taken for a signal to travel along the fibre connection). Even though it is fractions of a second the delay in downloading information means it is extremely difficult, for example, to provide services in Australia from a data centre in Singapore.
Additionally, unlike North America or Europe which are controlled by a single government or have, for the most part, some sort of federalisation and common legal framework, Asia is, for the most part, more separatist. The question of data-sovereignty (a concept familiar to those in the financial sector) and data security arises; essentially, – where should the data be physically stored? With heavy policing of personal data protection services, regulations might require data to be physically stored in every country. This is expensive to deploy, because it means data centres have to be set up in each country.
With the large proportion of data able to be hosted on cloud servers, there is no excuse for other industries not to embrace this technology.
What Asian enterprise should be asking itself is “how can the cloud work for me?”
With cloud computing, corporations stand to gain much more in productivity.
Cloud Computing, or what’s known as on-demand computing, is a type of internet-based computing that provides shared processing resources on-demand. Cloud computing allows you to access your data wherever and whenever, allowing you to maximise the benefits of activity-based working.
There are 3 main options in the cloud, public, private or hybrid.
Public clouds are owned and operated by third-party service providers. Customers benefit from economies of scale because infrastructure costs are spread across all users, allowing each individual client to operate on a low-cost, “pay-as-you-go” model. Another advantage of public cloud infrastructures is that they are typically larger in scale than an in-house enterprise cloud, which provides clients with seamless, on-demand scalability.
It is also important to note that all customers on public clouds share the same infrastructure pool with limited configurations, security protections and availability variances, as these factors are wholly managed and supported by the service provider.
Private clouds are built exclusively for an individual enterprise. They allow the firm to host applications in the cloud, while addressing concerns regarding data security and control, which is often lacking in a public cloud environment. There are two variations of private clouds:
On-Premise Private Cloud: This format, also known as an “internal cloud,” is hosted within an organization’s own data centre. It provides a more standardized process and protection, but is often limited in size and scalability. On-premise private clouds are best used for applications that require complete control and configurability of the infrastructure and security.
Externally-Hosted Private Cloud: This private cloud model is hosted by an external cloud computing provider. The service provider facilitates an exclusive cloud environment with full guarantee of privacy. This is recommended for organizations that prefer not to use public cloud.
Hybrid clouds combine the advantages of both the public and private cloud models. In a hybrid cloud, a company can leverage third-party cloud providers in either a full or partial manner. This increases the flexibility of computing. The hybrid cloud environment is also capable of providing on-demand, externally-provisioned scalability. Augmenting a traditional private cloud with the resources of a public cloud can be used to manage any unexpected surges in workload.
On the question of cloud security there will always be challenges for the cloud, particularly public However, even in highly regulated industries like the financial sector, estimates are that 30-40% of data may be capable of being stored in the cloud.
I previously had the pleasure of being stationed in Europe, where our CBRE EMEA offices were well equipped with virtual machines powered by the Cloud. This was immensely helpful as my position required me to travel frequently, and yet still be able to access company specific data. With a virtual machine, I could work from anywhere – using my personal laptop or mobile device to access my files. This gave me unparalleled flexibility – I could be talking to a client dialling through my office landline, or connected to a conference call on my work servers all while sitting on a beach in Hawaii enjoying a Pina Colada (I wish!). That is the brilliance of virtualisation of a work station, you don’t have to be in your office, and no one will know.
The potential of the cloud is limitless. In fact, many start-ups are embracing this type of technology and virtual machines in order to do-away with the overheads and costs of establishing offices, especially in cities like Singapore and Hong Kong where real estate is expensive.
It has been said that “Asia is the Edge”, and this is not a reference to U2! Analysts claim that by 2020, the Cloud market is expected to reach $89.9 billion, with demand mostly coming from the Asia Pacific region (40%), surpassing North America and Europe. Singapore is at the forefront of this wave, with large public cloud companies like Google, Microsoft and Amazon setting up their data centres here.
However, it is not all peaches and rainbows. The sheer distance and geographic space that Asia occupies throws up connectivity challenges; particularly around latency (the time taken for a signal to travel along the fibre connection). Even though it is fractions of a second the delay in downloading information means it is extremely difficult, for example, to provide services in Australia from a data centre in Singapore.
Additionally, unlike North America or Europe which are controlled by a single government or have, for the most part, some sort of federalisation and common legal framework, Asia is, for the most part, more separatist. The question of data-sovereignty (a concept familiar to those in the financial sector) and data security arises; essentially, – where should the data be physically stored? With heavy policing of personal data protection services, regulations might require data to be physically stored in every country. This is expensive to deploy, because it means data centres have to be set up in each country.
With the large proportion of data able to be hosted on cloud servers, there is no excuse for other industries not to embrace this technology.
What Asian enterprise should be asking itself is “how can the cloud work for me?”