The focus is on an organization that you choose which has leveraged Cloud Computing technologies in an attempt to improve profitability or to give them a competitive advantage. Research the organization to understand the challenges that they faced and how they intended to use Cloud Computing to overcome their challenges. 

Today, a large number of IT services have migrated to the cloud infrastructure, and this phenomenon is accelerating day by day. As most experts agree, the future of information technology in the cloud is defined.

 

In fact, cloud computing service providers allow organizations and companies to focus on their business instead of the multiple worries of providing and maintaining IT infrastructure. On the other hand, with the use of cloud infrastructure, the initial investment required to provide the infrastructure will be reduced to zero and operating costs will be significantly reduced.

 

The advantages of using cloud infrastructure include the following:

 

Significant reduction in data center operating and maintenance costs

Possibility of continuous service (Business continuity) and the ability to recover lost information

Focus more on the service instead of the infrastructure

Optimal use of hardware resources

Increase data security

 

Cloud Infrastructure (IaaS)

The types of services offered in cloud computing can be categorized according to their characteristics, but the most common classification of cloud computing services is based on the NIST‌ standard, which divides it into three logical sections including IaaS, PaaS and SaaS. This category is shown in the figure below.

In this article, only the cloud infrastructure or IaaS is considered and other types of cloud computing services are omitted. Cloud infrastructure or IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) is the first and most basic concept of cloud computing that can provide infrastructure such as data center, server, network, firewall, storage space, etc. very quickly. From the high financial and time cost, it can provide the necessary infrastructure to launch its services.

 

Nowadays, there is no need to express the importance and position of cloud services, especially cloud infrastructure services. Many businesses around the world have started migrating to cloud infrastructure a few years ago. In fact, the many and significant benefits of cloud infrastructure make this inevitable. International statistics, for example, show a 77% rate of migration to cloud services in Europe. Of course, in the more developed European countries, this percentage is even higher than the average. In the UK, for example, the migration rate to cloud services is around 88%. As shown in the figure below, along with Europe in the Middle East, the transfer of infrastructure to cloud infrastructure in 2015 to 2016 increased significantly and reached 65.8%.

 

In a 2017 report, citing Intel Security [1], Forbes stated that in the last 15 months, 80% of the organizations' budgets have been allocated to infrastructure and cloud solutions.

 

The reality of the market and the predictions made all indicate that the use of cloud infrastructure will grow very rapidly in the coming years. In almost all analytical studies, cloud services are one of the most important future and current technology trends in the world, and at least until the near future (next 10 years) its growth rate will be very high.

 

In addition to the benefits mentioned, one of the most important benefits discussed in this article is the reduction of costs for companies and organizations in the hardware infrastructure sector, which we will examine below.

 

 

 

Comparison of cloud and on-premise infrastructure from an economic point of view

With the development of cloud infrastructure and its pervasiveness in recent years, an important question for businesses has arisen: From an economic point of view, is using cloud infrastructure more cost-effective or owning hardware with On-Premise model?

 

The answer to this question is associated with many complexities. At first glance, hardware ownership may seem more cost-effective. For example, you buy a server for your web services once and use it for years for free. But in reality, the story is not so simple. In other words, when you decide to go it cheap and risk the low bandwidth you are only fooling yourself. These costs can be divided into the following three general categories:

 

1. Direct costs: Includes costs you incur to supply your servers or storage equipment. This cost will be considered as your capital (CAPEX cost). Here are some of the most important ones:

 

Supply of servers and storage equipment

Provide spare or replacement hardware

Support site or infrastructure in some accessibility sensitive businesses

?. Indirect costs: refers to the cost of peripherals or infrastructure required to set up the servers, for example the following can be mentioned:

 

Electricity costs

Network communication infrastructure between servers

Infrastructure equipment such as switches, routers and...

Security equipment such as firewalls

Equipment cooling costs

The cost of human resources to maintain infrastructure, servers, operating systems, and

Repair costs

3. Hidden costs: vary depending on the servers used or the type of service provided. Such as the following costs:

 

Bandwidth cost

Need to improve infrastructure

Costs due to unforeseen events

In addition to the above, it should be noted that servers and storage equipment are depreciated on average in 5 years of operation and after this period need to be replaced.

 

Local infrastructure is still widely used, but the high costs and concerns that this method imposes on organizations have led many businesses around the world to move at least part of their infrastructure to cloud infrastructure. Business costs in the cloud infrastructure usage model are calculated entirely based on how much you consume resources and based on the following factors:

 

Number of processor cores

The amount of RAM

Amount of storage space and its type

the traffic

As you can see, the worries and risks of businesses using cloud infrastructure will be significantly reduced and they will transfer a large part of these worries and risks to the cloud infrastructure company. In fact, regardless of the cost, cloud infrastructure is a service that is provided to you, so you will no longer have to worry about maintaining or repairing your infrastructure.

 

With cloud solutions, you can identify your infrastructure needs, then estimate your costs in both the cloud and On-Premise models in the short term. For long periods of time (such as 5 years) you should keep in mind that as your business grows, you will also have to increase the number of servers and infrastructure, which with the On-Premise model, will cost your business more.

 

Given the above, for businesses that require scalability, accessibility and high bandwidth, using cloud infrastructure is a cost-effective and completely economical option. In addition, the cost of infrastructure development can be spent on investment and business development using cloud solutions. Also, by using cloud infrastructure, you indirectly benefit from the expertise available in cloud service companies.

 

 

 

A strategic recommendation for beginners

Allocating resources in a way that leads to the highest returns in line with its goals can be considered one of the most important strategic concerns of any business. In general, the optimal use of strategic organizational resources in today's world, which is changing faster than ever before, is in itself a fundamental concern. This is even more important for startups (for which resource constraints are more prominent). Needless to say, the two vital resources of any startup are human resources and financial resources, and the success of startups is tied to the proper use of these resources.

 

As mentioned in the previous sections, using cloud infrastructure can save a lot of money for startups on both sources. In this article, considering that more savings in financial resources are desired, we also considered human resources savings as a kind of financial savings.

 

In general, for each business, the three main sources of funding can be considered as follows:

 

Revenue from the sale of products and services

Credit through investors and investment companies

Receive financial facilities from banks or financial institutions

The financial resources of a startup, like any other company, are not listed outside of these three factors. Therefore, in order to increase the profit margin (and create a competitive advantage) for startups that are more focused on providing innovative services or providing existing services at a lower cost to the customer, innovation in operational processes (production and delivery of products) or services) is very important. Is. Is.

 

These innovations can lead to cost reductions that allow a startup to produce and market its product or service at a lower cost than competitors.

 

Using cloud infrastructure instead of hardware can also play a role in some startups (depending on the activity). Funds published in this way can also be spent on other areas of competition, including advertising, marketing, and product feature development.

 

On the other hand, using cloud infrastructure instead of buying hardware significantly reduces the initial investment needed to start or grow a startup business. This in turn reduces business risk for start-ups and investors.

 

 

 

Common IaaS Business Scenarios

Typical businesses with IaaS include:

Testing and Development: Teams can quickly set up test and development environments and launch new applications faster.

Website management: Setting up a website using IaaS can be cheaper than traditional site management.

Storage, Backup, and Recovery: Organizations avoid devoting capital to storage and relieving the complexity of storage management, which typically requires a skilled employee to manage the data and comply with legal requirements. The IaaS is useful for addressing unforeseen and growing storage needs. It can also simplify the planning and management of backup and recovery systems.

Web applications: IaaS provides all the infrastructure needed to support web applications such as storage, application servers, and web and network resources. Organizations can instantly deploy web applications in IaaS and easily increase or decrease the scale of infrastructure when unpredictable applications are needed.

High Performance Computing: High performance computing (HPC) in supercomputers, computer networks, and suite of computers helps solve problems with millions of variables and computations. Examples include earthquake simulations, weather forecasts, financial modeling, and product design evaluations.

Big data analysis: Big data is a popular term for a large data set that potentially includes valuable patterns, trends, and combinations. Exploring this data set to extract and find hidden patterns requires power. There is so much processing that the IaaS effectively reduces this need.

 

Advantages of IaaS

Reduces investment costs and reduces current costs: IaaS eliminates the advanced costs of setting up and managing a site data center, making it a cost-effective option for startups, businesses and testing new ideas. .

Maintains business continuity and prevents risk: Achieving high accessibility, business continuity and risk prevention is costly because it requires a lot of technology and staff. But IaaS can reduce these costs by accessing the right level of service (SLA) services and accessing programs and data in the event of a problem or interruption.

High-speed innovation: Once you decide to launch a new product or initiative, you can build the necessary computing infrastructure in minutes or hours, instead of days or weeks and sometimes months.

Faster responds to changing business conditions: IaaS enables you to quickly increase your resources to be ready when the need for your applications increases (for example, on vacation and as demand increases) then again when needs decrease , The scale of resources is reduced in order to save costs.

Makes you focus on your business: IaaS allows team members to focus on the core business of the organization rather than the IT infrastructure.

Increases stability, reliability, and support: With IaaS, there is no need to maintain, upgrade software or hardware, or troubleshoot equipment. By using the right resources at the right time, the service provider ensures that your infrastructure is reliable.

Provides more security: The cloud service provider can provide security for your applications and data

New applications are available to users faster. Because you do not need to first set up the infrastructure before you can develop and deliver applications, you can get them faster with IaaS.

 

 

Common PaaS scenario

Organizations typically use PaaS for these scenarios:

Development Framework: PaaS provides a framework within which developers can develop or customize cloud-based applications. Just as you build a macro in Excel software, PaaS allows developers to build their applications using components in the software. Cloud features such as scalability, high availability, and versatility reduce the amount of programming that Blade developers do.

 

Business or Analytical Intelligence: The tools provided by PaaS as a service allow an organization to: Analyze and extract their data, find patterns, and predict outputs to make estimates, product design decisions, return on investment. And improve other business decisions.

 

Additional Services: PaaS providers may provide other services such as workflow, directory, security, and scheduling that improve the application software.

 

Common SaaS scenarios

If you have a web-based email service such as Outlook, Hotlook and Yahoo Mail, then you should use some form of SaaS. With these services, you can access your account in cyberspace from a browser. Email software is embedded in the service network, and your messages are stored there. You can access your saved emails and messages through a web browser on any computer or device connected to the Internet.

The previous examples are free services for personal use. For corporate use, you can rent utility applications such as email, collaboration, and calendar, as well as applications such as customer relationship management (CRM), enterprise resource planning (ERP), and document management. You pay to use these apps by subscribing or depending on your usage level.

 

Cloud computing services vary slightly depending on their provider, but many have a browser-based dashboard that makes it easier for IT professionals and developers to order resources and manage their accounts. Some cloud services are also designed to work with REST APIs and a command line interface (CLI) that provides developers with several options.