Cloud computing is now being adopted by types of organizations at differing levels of expertise and experience.  These cloud services include analytics, business application, development and collaboration projects.

Start-ups were the early adopters of cloud computing using mission critical applications. The benefits to these start-ups were fast implementation, pay-as-you-go terms, scalability and reduced need for high-level in-house IT expertise, to name a few. Large enterprises initially used cloud applications for development projects, analytics, and other less mission-critical needs.

However, there is now a growing interest in cloud applications by large enterprises with established IT staffs.

This interest is demonstrated by the investment large providers such as SAP are making in offering mission-critical offerings to their large enterprise customers. An example is the SAP HANA Cloud platform. As they state on their website, “Quickly build innovative consumer-grade and industry apps for today’s always-on, mobile, social, and data-driven world. Deploy and manage them on a highly scalable, secure platform that leverages the in-memory computing power of SAP HANA.” This is very attractive to any size enterprise. The cloud is rapidly becoming a business critical solution for any enterprise.

Cloud computing is also offering the ability for an enterprise to collaborate with other organizations, external suppliers and customers. As stated in Cloud Computing for Business : What is Cloud? 

“Cloud computing enables businesses to think and act beyond the “four walls” of the company through exchange of services. They can access marketplace best practice solutions, and select effective IT services from multiple sources to meet their needs faster and at lower cost. An ecosystem exists where participants in a defined market have integrated business processes and use common standards for exchange of information, products, and services. In today’s world, companies are participating in highly collaborative ecosystems providing their specific expertise to create end-to-end services. This will become more important in the future.”

The Evolutionary Process of Cloud Implementation

An enterprise will progress through its evolutionary process of implementing a cloud solution. First, it may implement non-critical applications. As that goes well, the company will gradually begin to implement mission critical applications until the entire data center is a cloud implementation. Cloud applications will interact with in-house applications for a period of time as all issues of concern are worked out or accepted. As that all goes well the enterprise will progress into collaborating with other organizations and their cloud applications sharing data and initiating actions such as orders and shipments.

While this is happening, governance, security and resilience must be progressing in a synchronized fashion. Data Backup and Recovery processes must be modified accordingly.

Data backup and recovery processes must follow the evolutionary process. While the data can alternatively remain within the customer’s network and backed up off-site to the customer’s choice backup location, the data backup and recovery processes can be managed in the cloud. The data may or may not be in the cloud with the model of remote data backup administration. When the term “cloud” is mentioned, we visualize an “all or nothing” scenario. We think that the data must be replicated to its backup site. We also imagine that the management of the DR processes and the data together must be in the cloud. But, alternative models are possible.

To further discuss the subject of cloud data backup and recovery management, contact Salvus Data Consultants at 903-201-7233. They are Data Backup/Recovery Managed Service Providers that provide remote management of the Backup process, along with professional Disaster Backup and Recovery consultation.