Cloud-based networks help a business grow and expand. However, before deciding on the type of cloud computing you want to use in your business to cut costs, improve operating efficiencies and increase collaboration, you first need to understand how cloud computing itself works so that you can recognize what a vendor is offering.

What Is A Cloud Computing?

PC magazine has an excellent definition of a cloud:

“In the simplest terms, cloud computing means storing and accessing data and programs over the Internet instead of your computer’s hard drive. The cloud is just a metaphor for the Internet. It goes back to the days of flowcharts and presentations that would represent the gigantic server-farm infrastructure of the Internet as nothing but a puffy, white cumulonimbus cloud, accepting connections and doling out information as it floats.”

One way of simplifying the complexity of a cloud from a user’s perspective is to think of it as a combination of service and deployment models.

Services and Deployment Models

Every cloud is unique in its combination of services and deployment models.

Service Models

Services can be LaaS, PaaS, or SaaS.

LaaS, or Logging as a Service, gives users control of their software environment without having to invest in hardware. You won’t need to buy a server or invest in a climate-controlled room because you’ll be using the provider’s virtual machine.

PaaS, or Platform as a Service, gives users the tools they need to build their own applications. Users are free to develop games, websites, or social or mobile applications to suit their business needs. The provider gives the APIs and the environment to run them.

Saas, or Software as a Service, gives end-users everything they need when it comes to applications, including highly-sophisticated, industry-specific apps that would be prohibitively expensive to buy. All users have to do to use top of the line software is connect to the Internet with their favorite device and point their browser in the right direction. The provider not only takes care of the software, including performing upgrades, but also the technology on which it runs.

Deployment Models

Deployment models could be private clouds, public clouds, hybrid clouds, or community clouds.

Private clouds are run for an organization which either manages itself or managed by a third party, and these private clouds can exist on or off premise.

Public clouds are open to everyone and these are managed by an independent cloud service provider.

Hybrid clouds consist of two or more clouds, and these can be either private or public clouds.

Community clouds consist of two or more clouds, but rather than serving a private group or being open to the public, they serve organizations within a community.

Networks

While a cloud can be a combination of any assortment of services and deployment models, every cloud must have a network. In fact, without a network, there is no cloud. Networks provide clouds with the infrastructure needed for users to access applications and make use of data.

However clouds are now beginning to redefine legacy networks. The entire concept of networking will change with innovations in the infrastructure, applications, accessibility, and traffic. Overtime, clouds will make network architecture less rigid, network services less location dependent, and network resources more virtual.

Selecting Your Cloud

When choosing a cloud computing provider, you need to figure out what services and deployment models work best for your organization. You also have to decide whether or not you need accelerated cloud access, network security for your virtual machines, or virtual data centers for different customer bases. In addition, you’ll also need to decide whether or not you want to operate in a large single-tier network for a large number of virtual machines.

The alternative is to find a cloud where users are free to jump form one cloud to another seamlessly without the necessity of reentering all their credentials.

The Bottom Line

Cloud computing will help you meet the future challenges and opportunities of your business. It will improve your business by reducing costs, improving flexibility and scalability, and enhancing mobility and agility. When shifting your business from the legacy model it may be using now to the cloud, you will find upgrades and business continuity easier.

On the cloud, providers take care of business concerns like upgrades, business continuity, and IT security. Subscribers don’t have to worry about staying current on their software, employees can work from anywhere, and businesses don’t have to worry about disaster-proofing their IT.

Essentially, all the costs associated with maintaining and securing a network, applications, resources, and machines are handled by cloud computing providers whose reputations and business rely on providing excellent services to subscribers. They spend significant amounts investing in top-grade data centers, secure servers, and reliable connections. Subscribers benefit enormously from the economies of scale.

Twenty years ago, IT was an afterthought for most businesses. Technology had only been in the workplace for a few years. If a company had to hire an “IT guy”, it was rarely seen as an investment. It was a necessary evil to keep other parts of the business running.

The attitude today is completely the opposite. Computerworld reports that 43% of companies expect their IT budget to be larger in 2015 that it was the prior year. Companies now see IT spending as an investment in the future of their company. IT is no longer about making sure the server is up and the printer is plugged in. It’s about developing technology that makes the company better at what it does.

How Can Technology Help Your Business

Consider a small business with sales people or other employees in the field. How are they connecting with the home-office? Most small businesses with field employees operate through e-mail and text messages. What if you had a custom system that allowed sales people to enter orders while they were at the client’s office or allowed maintenance workers to update work tickets in real time? Would that be valuable?

What about if you had a system that monitored key metrics for your business and generated alerts when something was out of a normal range? How much time and money would that save?

Technology is about far more than technical support. A real technology expert can build systems and software that make your business more productive and profitable.

The Value in Real Experts

Hiring someone for an IT role isn’t just about finding someone that is tech savvy. For example, if you hire someone to build a piece of software to make your field-employees more productive, are you confident that this person can write secure code that won’t leak customer’s sensitive data?

The work that individuals within IT perform necessarily requires them to handle sensitive systems and data. You need to be confident that this person is a real expert in their field. The problem is, most business owners don’t have the technical expertise to identify the true experts from those that just use a lot of technical jargon. Herein lies the value of IT staffing services that pay attention to significant industry vertical trends and emerging technologies.

Working with a Small Budget

By definition, small businesses don’t have a lot of resources at their disposal. This is especially true for small businesses that are just getting started. It’s likely that there isn’t a budget to hire an experienced IT professional. Herein lies the beauty of using a staffing company.

A staffing company can usually provide temp and part-time labor. You are able to utilize an expert to complete your project without worrying about how you can justify a full-time salary. Likewise, once your business grows to the point where it makes sense to have a full-time position, the same staffing company can use their expertise to connect you with a highly skilled IT professional that will bring tremendous value to your organization.

Don’t let a limited budget keep you from the expertise that will make your business soar.

It’s not easy to write secure code, but it’s something that you need to think about before forming the first loop. Managers, auditors, software engineers, and infrastructure architects invested in secure coding, try to imagine all possible worst case scenarios with every piece of the code. While, of course, it’s not possible to anticipate every possible adverse scenario, thinking ahead reduces the number of opportunities to attack. It closes holes and safeguards against a variety of possible security breaches.

While it’s not possible to cover every way to produce much more bulletproof code, here are 7 suggestions that will get you thinking in the right way:

#1: Test all your inputs.

Your code opens doors to the Internet. All software that takes input from the Internet is vulnerable. Think of these doors like paths that hackers can use to sneak into your machine. So test inputs.

#2: Don’t hoard information for future use.

Coders are a little like pack­rats. They like to hoard information, stacking away copies of anything that might be useful at a later date. While this habit is highly beneficial when it comes to debugging software, it leaves a trail of breadcrumbs that a hacker can put to malicious use.

#3: Passwords are not enough.

Theoretically, passwords should do the job if they are done properly—with an alphanumeric string, with a minimum of eight characters, and with a mix of letters, numbers, and symbols. Unfortunately, human error compromises the strength of passwords. People use their personal names or nicknames, names of family or friends, and names of their pets. They use their social security numbers, house numbers, anniversaries and birthdays. Then, if that’s not problematic enough, they forget their passwords, only use simple ones so that they remember, and reuse the same password for all their accounts.

Passwords do work if done right, and, to be fair, nobody has come up with a more flexible or simpler method. However, don’t rely on passwords as your only security measure. According to a hard­hitting article by Mat Honan in Wired, it may actually be time to kill the password. It’s no longer working for civilization.

#4: Discuss risks and options with the team.

Secure code is not just what happens with a code editor. Managers and company executives, many who may have no technical skills, are also involved in the development of software. When requirements are being drafted, everyone involved in the project needs to talk about the potential risk of each requirement.

#5: Build in progressive delays.

Although it may seem counter­ intuitive to slip in some delays in the code because it makes things more inefficient, there is a good reason for it. Attacks are often automated, which means an attack could have hundreds, thousands, even millions of iterations. A bot­­ pretending to be a human user ­­ could literally send a million or more queries. It could also try every possible password combination a trillion times until it stumbles upon the right one. All these attacks thrive on the elegance and efficiency of your code. However, it you build in delays, especially those that get progressively longer, it will stymie these fake users.

# 6: Encrypt much more.

Programmers, as a rule, don’t like to use too much encryption, for some good reasons: it adds still one more step, makes debugging even more difficult, and makes it tougher to track down errors. Elegant coding is hard enough without having to scramble over a pile of enigmatic numbers. An excellent example of efficient encryption can be seen in some of the newest network security software, which uses FIPS 140­2 validated AES­256 encryption to protect all ultra-­sensitive information.

#7: You can’t please everyone.

Users want one thing from computers: ease of use. This is a great marketing idea and one that was extensively used by Steve Jobs to make Macs, iPods, and iPads fly off retail shelves, but it is a terrible idea when it comes to security. When you don’t link up all parts of a system together into one seamless piece, then users have to log into each part. Although it is awkward, it improves security­­ because it drastically reduces the threat of a single weak link allowing complete access to the system.

The Growing Security Threat

Why are all these security measures necessary? After all, it makes coding much more cumbersome and code less elegant. It also irritates users who have to work with less efficient software. However, the reason to write secure code is simply because there is now an enormous need for security. According to the Internet Security Threat Report, the number of security attacks is on the rise each year. In 2013, 552 million consumers had some form of identity information stolen through a breach. This was 62% more than the year before, where there were 253 breaches in total. We may have to rethink everything when it comes to coding and security.