ROBERT KYSLINGER, Founder and Managing General Partner, OMNIPOTECH
As markets and organizations continue to evolve, the most commonly asked question that is not directly related to security is: "Should I move my business to the cloud?" First of all, it's important to understand how a person defines "cloud." Larry Ellison, the founder of Oracle, once said, "The cloud is everything we've always done." Looking back through history, we see that, even in 1954, the original systems by IBM were cloud computing. They used a dumb terminal and centralized the data and computing power in one location. Looking at today's common architectures, the data and computers are still centralized, but our workforce has become more mobile and decentralized. Setting aside all the marketing hype, the cloud is where the core data is located, even if that location is your headquarters. This raises the real question: "When should I host core infrastructure with a provider or co-locate my servers in a datacenter?" Here is an overview of the two topics to begin the conversation.
Multiple offices or remote workers. Having more than one office usually means the core data is located at only one location. If that location were to be offline, would it cause the other locations or remote workers to stop working? If so, then you should move to the cloud. Almost all commercial buildings are not designed like datacenters, which have redundant A/C to cool equipment, redundant power feeds into the building and reliable backup generators that come on line automatically. Since anyone outside the main location requires internet to access the data, the main site must have multiple internet connections entering the building from two different providers in two different directions to avoid a line cut. If possible, avoid having all providers use the same telephone poles, because one errant truck can take down all the internet connections as well. Other single points of failure at a main location must also be addressed such as server, storage, backup, switches and firewalls. These additional hardware, maintenance and internet costs to add redundancy may be used to move to a hosting provider or collocate your data with a datacenter operator.
Location dependency. If your team evacuated from the Gulf Coast to avoid a hurricane, could they continue to operate remotely if your location went offline? Some professionals -- like accountants, lawyers, wealth managers, insurance agents, private equity specialists and other pure knowledge businesses -- can operate from anywhere and need to communicate and work through a disaster or loss of power. Moving to the cloud is most likely the right decision for them. If your business sells truck parts, air conditioning, pipe, construction equipment or other hard goods -- where customers come to your location -- or you are a local builder, chiropractor, dentist or doctor, then moving core computing to the cloud doesn't matter as much. You'll most likely be closed during a major weather event. Of course, these location-dependent businesses still have an off-site disaster recovery setup and test it regularly in the event their location is impacted by one or more perils.
If you are moving to the cloud or a datacenter, then choose a geography on a different part of the national power grid and not subject to the risk of earthquakes, terrorism, tornados, hurricanes or tropical storms. Popular datacenter locations are Colorado, Arizona and Minnesota. IT people should not lead the discussion of locating the infrastructure nearby because they have a need-for-proximity bias, which is the belief that infrastructure is easier to manage if you can touch it. All datacenter providers have support, and they can easily track, replace or allow your provider to perform warranty work on equipment. If collocating your equipment, you should inventory the most commonly failed parts, like random-access memory (RAM) and hard drives, to avoid the risk of global supply interruption. This has occurred multiple times, causing major providers to miss their four-hour replacement windows by several days or weeks.
In summary, think through the risks and assume everything will fail or die, because one day it will. If your firm cannot endure that failure, then mitigate it with geography or redundancy.
For more information, visit www.omnipotech.com or call (281) 768-4308.
