#cloud Archives

Cloud Computing for Beginners: A Complete Guide

Posted on 22/05/202103/06/2021 by Anteelo Master

Introduction to Cloud Computing

Before cloud computing came into the picture, many companies used traditional servers to carry out operations, processes and data storage. Eventually, it became challenging and costly to completely rely on other companies later, for computing, data processing and storage. But thanks to the big giants today, for creating advanced cloud computing services for making computing and storage more convenient and manageable.

Cloud computing is a leading edge technology that stands for the delivery of high-demand computing services including applications, storage, and power processing, entirely over the internet. It means that instead of using external computer hardware and software, cloud computing offers the entire computing and data storage and processing service over the internet only.

In simpler terms, cloud computing is the practice of using a network of remote servers that are hosted on the internet. The purpose is to store, manage and process data effortlessly rather than relying on a local server or personal computer system.

For decades computer industries used to work by storing data and running programs from the hard drive. But ever since businesses have adopted the cloud computing service, with the help of online connection, it has become flexible to manage resources anytime and anywhere.

Cloud computing gives users easy access to use online services that are available through any device with an internet connection. Users don’t require to be in a certain location to utilize this service as ‘The Cloud’ is almost everywhere these days. In fact, here are some examples of companies that provide their services online through cloud services:

Understanding How Cloud Computing Works

Here is a layman’s guide to how to understand cloud computing works. Basically, cloud has two main sections: the front-end and the back-end. These sections are connected to each other through the internet network. The front-end is the user or client-side of the computer whereas the back-end includes ‘The Cloud’ section of the computer system.

The front-end that consists of the client’s computer enables the user to access data stored in the cloud with the help of the internet browser or with a cloud software. Although, all cloud computing systems do not necessarily have to use the same user interface.

On the other hand, the back-end of the cloud technology system is responsible for storing data and information securely. It includes servers, computers, data storage systems, and central servers. The central server uses a certain set of rules called protocols to facilitate operations. To ensure seamless connectivity between computers or devices that are linked through cloud , it uses middle-ware software.

Apart from these two main section components, the cloud computing services fall under three broad models:

Infrastructure as a Service(IaaS):

In this most basic service model of cloud computing, where the user can rent network connectivity, IT infrastructure resources like data center, servers, storage networking hardware and cloud computing security compliance from a cloud service provider. The enterprise can use the IaaS and customize it accordingly so as to build a cost-effective software offering.

Platform as a Service(PaaS)

This cloud computing service offers an on-demand environment to develop, test, deliver and manage software applications. The PaaS is designed for developers to make it easier for them to promptly develop websites or mobile applications without having to worry about the setup or management of underlying infrastructure resources.

Software as a Service (SaaS)SaaS is the largest model in the cloud market that is growing rapidly today. This model uses the web browser to deliver applications to clients that are managed by the third party vendor. Whereas, its interface is accessed to the client side. Most of the SaaS applications do not require to be downloaded as these directly run from the web browser but some plugins are required to be installed.

The Virtualization in Cloud Computing

Just like its name, cloud computing is very vast as it holds various processes, operations, and management. Similarly, it involves a process of cloud computing virtualization. The cloud computing virtualization allows a user to utilize the same server to run multiple applications and operating systems, thus providing an efficient utilization of resources as well as reducing costs.

There are four main cloud computing virtualization types:

Application Virtualization:

The application virtualization helps users to have remote access to the application from a server. The server stores the personal information and other application characteristics but still holds the potential to run on a local workstation with the internet connection.

Network Virtualization:

It is the ability to run multiple virtual networks that individually have a separate control and data plan. Network virtualization provides the facility to create and provision virtual networks such as logical switches, routers, firewalls, VPN, and workload security, either within days or even within weeks.

Desktop Virtualization:

This desktop virtualization enables users to emulate a workstation load in place of a server. It allows users to access their desktop remotely regardless of any location by a different machine. It offers the benefit of user portability, mobility, effortless management of software like installation, updates, and patches.

Server Virtualization:

This is more of a technique to mask server resources. Server virtualization stimulates physical servers by altering their identities, numbers, processors and their operating systems. This spares users from the burden of continuously managing complex server resources.

How does Cloud Computing Benefit an Organization?

Cloud computing is just not about trendy applications that people use for storing photos and videos online. It plays a major part in the business model nowadays and has taken the world by storm! With the help of cloud servives, businesses are not only getting the benefit of storing and accessing data but also the benefit of operating businesses innovatively.

Following are the advantages that cloud computing benefits organizations with today:

Cost Saving

It has been really expensive to run, manage, and deploy local systems for a long time and not to forget how much capital it has cost. With cloud computing, a user doesn’t require going through monthly expenditure of maintenance as everything is handled by the service provider itself.

Flexibility

Managing resources becomes quite easier with cloud computing as one has to simply pay for the resources that are being used each month. It offers the ease of process and operation as the Cloud storage providers offer flexible packages in which one can add or reduce the amount of storage that one pays to use.

Data Recovery

Cyberattacks can destroy a huge amount of data if everything is stored in physical servers and hard drives. As a result, it will not only lead to data loss but also to customer trust in the organization. With cloud computing, these issues are less likely to happen and even if it happens, there are massive storage locations where the data will always be safely present as a copy at another location.

Increased Security

With cloud hosting, your organization is always protected against hacking and internal data thefts. It offers a robust firewall technology that offers features like intrusion prevention systems and in streaming virus protection.

Migrating ERP to the Cloud

Posted on 04/07/202008/06/2021 by Anil

Many large companies are considering migrating their ERP applications — including SAP S/4HANA — to the public cloud. Drivers for many companies include cost, flexibility or adopting a cloud-first strategy.

Q: What questions do companies ask when they are considering moving ERP applications to a public cloud?

A: First, they ask “Can I move?” These are large, robust systems, and companies want to make sure their apps are technically capable of running in the cloud. The second question they ask is “Should I move?” They want to be confident that when they migrate their mission-critical applications, they can continue running their business. And the third question is, how expensive is a public cloud? We manages, migrates and runs some of the most complex SAP systems in the world, so I know firsthand that SAP can run effectively in the cloud. SLAs and maintenance can continue in the cloud, and cloud security is well-covered. Cost reduction can be one of the big benefits of public cloud but only if the design, migration and run phases are properly managed.

Q: How do companies decide when the right time is to make the move?

A: Some of our customers have a good business case for waiting to upgrade, but most are exploring their options. Moving to SAP S/4HANA or other ERP systems is a big change, so why not move to cloud at the same time? These are big systems that handle companies’ finance and production lines, so there is often a limited maintenance window to bring them down. If a transition is on your roadmap, you’ll save yourself a step. And in the current macroeconomic climate, a slowdown in system usage is a good time to make changes in preparation for heavier future traffic.

Q: What business disruption can a company expect when it migrates to the cloud?

A: Moving to the cloud is not very different from any other migration. It’s become a routine process, and when done correctly, companies can expect close to near-zero downtime.

Companies can mitigate risks even more if they first test out the migration with one business unit and a single proof of concept. They also should clean up all the data they don’t need before migrating.

Q: What benefits have clients achieved?

A: The benefits are elasticity, agility and being able to grow on command. In the case of SAP, companies can tap into its new analytics capabilities as well as those of the ecosystem they gain when moving to the hyperscalers’ clouds.

If you want to look at business outcomes, consider Croda International, a global chemical manufacturer. It wanted to take advantage of the on-demand capabilities of cloud while increasing the ability of its IT department to respond to business demands. The company developed a strategy for moving to the cloud in anticipation of a major upgrade to SAP S/4HANA. By deploying our Platform as a Service for SAP on Azure as part of a low-risk, phased approach, 106 workloads were migrated in just 12 weeks.

Q: How should companies start the whole process?

A: Companies need to have true conversations — within the business and with their systems integrator. The new environments are richer and easier to consume and combine. At the same time, companies need to think about cost control and avoid lock-in or technical debt. They need to think about what they are trying to achieve, both digitally and in their business. They can introduce new technology. They can think about connecting their SAP landscape to machine learning or the internet of things (IoT). They can introduce new features to customers and suppliers. In the cloud, they can leverage so many things they weren’t able to access before. Thinking about the end state will allow companies to move their businesses forward.

The Impact of Cloud Hosting on Retail

Posted on 06/05/202016/06/2021 by Tushar

Technology is changing the retail landscape at a dramatic rate. The proportion of online sales continues to grow (from 2.8% in 2006 to 32.8% in 2020 – source: ONS), there are more ways to sell than ever before and the lines between online and in-store shopping are becoming increasingly blurred. To stay competitive, many retail are now adopting the cloud to free them from the constraints of in-house IT systems, enable them to be more agile and let them take advantage of the latest technologies. Here, we’ll look at how cloud is transforming retail.

Operational integration

One of the major advantages of cloud over legacy in-house IT systems is that it enables data to be easily unified and systems like communications, marketing, inventory and shipping to be integrated. This provides businesses with a greater understanding of their business and more control over their operations. Instead of separate, disjointed systems, they are provided with a business-wide IT infrastructure that provides operational seamlessness.

As a result, companies are able to make operational savings, teams can collaborate better, new approaches can be developed and customer experiences can be improved.

Better visibility of supply chain and inventory

With all parts of the business connected to the cloud, retailers can have company-wide visibility of their supply chain and inventory. The cloud-based technology, blockchain, for example, offers retailers a clearer overview of the supply chain, giving them the ability to track the origin and movement of goods and create financial audit trails.

With inventory, businesses can have stock information in real-time, ensuring they have up to date information of what’s in stock and where it is. This can help them maintain stock levels, offer customers click and collect from individual stores and give the company a better understanding of what is and isn’t selling.

Seamless supplier integration

From the procurement of stock to shipping and aftersales, retailers collaborate with numerous partners to provide services to their customers. Cloud technology enables retail and their suppliers to integrate systems, providing real-time status information. Retailers can know where their incoming consignments and outgoing deliveries are, access data from outsourced communications partners or loyalty programs and share documents with suppliers.

What’s more, some of this information can be used to enhance the customer experience, for example, sharing delivery tracking information and enabling customers to modify delivery instructions en-route, in real-time.

Personalised customer experience

Not only are customers attracted to retailers that offer personalisation; many are willing to pay more for the experience. Personalisation means the shopping experience is tailored to individual customers; they are given product recommendations and offers that are relevant to their wants and needs and this saves them a great deal of time finding the right items. This convenience makes them loyal shoppers and increases LTV.

The essential ingredient for personalisation is customer data, ideally a complete map of the customer journey. It is here where cloud plays an important role, providing real-time data on browsing and purchasing histories and linking it to all the other information the business holds on a customer to provide product recommendations and other services that are personalised for the individual.

Business intel

While retailers gather a lot of valuable data, making use of it has, historically, been hampered because it was stored in different departmental silos, sometimes on separate IT systems. Cloud enables data to be unified, stored centrally and accessed by anyone who is permitted to use it.

As a result, datasets that had previously been kept isolated can be brought together to provide a far more detailed analysis. With cloud’s ability to offer big data analytics, together with advanced technologies like AI and machine learning, the capacity to gain new insights has never been greater. Retail that use the cloud have benefitted from finding ways to save money, improve and automate operations and deliver new and better services for their customers. What’s more, the cloud enables them to do this quicker than ever before, giving the ability to react swiftly to changes in the marketplace.

A cost-effective IT solution

As retailers become increasingly reliant on IT, many have struggled with the cost. Cloud has enabled these businesses to shrink IT costs considerably. With cloud vendors providing the IT infrastructure, retailers no longer need to purchase and maintain expensive in-house datacentres of their own. The cloud’s pay-as-you-go payment structure is also beneficial, enabling retailers to scale up or down as demand requires, while only paying for the resources they use. And there’s no limit to the resources that are at a retailer’s disposal, should it need them.

Additionally, there are no hardware maintenance costs to pay and the service is managed, freeing up time for IT staff to work on business oriented projects. Even software is less expensive, with many cloud-based apps being open-source and vendors able to offer the most popular proprietary apps at lower costs.

Conclusion

Cloud has become the go-to solution for retails, with migration accelerating significantly since the pandemic. Its ability to unify and integrate systems and data and make use of modern technologies like data analytics, AI and machine learning has provided retailers with better intelligence to improve all aspects of their businesses, cut costs and enhance user experience.

Why Do Finance Companies Require the Cloud?

Posted on 05/05/202016/06/2021 by Tushar

The need for robust security and to comply with stringent data privacy regulations have, until recently, prevented many finance companies opting for cloud computing. Today, however, there’s a growing shift towards the cloud as more organization adopt digital-first approaches in a bid to stay relevant in the rapidly advancing, technology-based market. Cloud technology provides finance companies with the infrastructure needed for digital transformation, helping them to improve customer experience, drive growth and stay competitive, all while enabling them to remain compliant with regulations. Here, we’ll examine why finance companies need cloud computing.

Cloud keeps financial data secure

It is no surprise that finance organisations are heavily regulated. The data they hold is highly sensitive and includes both the financial information of customers and details of trading operations. This makes it an extremely valuable target for cybercriminals which, if stolen, could have a major impact on personal and business customers and on the financial company itself. Organisations within the sector therefore need to put security at the centre of their IT operations and must develop a secure infrastructure that robustly defends them against attacks.

The issue for many finance companies is that achieving such security in-house is not easy to accomplish. State of the art security tools are expensive to implement and require specialist expertise. Cloud providers, however, already have both the tools and the expertise in place to keep their infrastructure and their customers’ systems and data secure. This also helps them maintain compliance with regulations like GDPR and PCI DSS. Migrating to the cloud, therefore, can provide levels of security far better than most companies can achieve on-site and in most cases, come included in the cost of the service.

Cloud vendors provide protection for finance companies in a number of important ways. For those with concerns over the multitenancy of the public cloud, for example, this can be overcome by adopting a hybrid cloud infrastructure where data is housed in a single-tenancy private cloud and applications on the public cloud.

Of course, whether public or private, the cloud system will be robustly protected by a powerful arsenal of leading-edge security tools. These include state of the art, next-gen firewalls, like the FortiGate firewalls used at eukhost, as well as intrusion detection and prevention tools, anti-malware, data encryption, SSL certificates, DDoS protection, VPNs, email verification and encryption tools, spam filtering and more.

The providers themselves have to comply with stringent security regulations and will have their own security policies and procedures in place. These will include ensuring that they have enough redundancy in their system to maintain services should one of their datacentres be taken offline, providing backup power and cooling systems, maintaining physical security of the premises, and guaranteeing availability with an SLA. This way, they can ensure a company’s financial data remains secure and available at all times.

With regard to GDPR, financial institutions need to be careful that vendors do not store their data in countries that do not provide the necessary guarantees for privacy. Any data stored in datacentres in the USA, for example, can be legally accessed by the US government security agencies if they think it pertinent to an investigation. As this contravenes GDPR, the data of UK and EU citizens should not be stored in such countries. This is why, at eukhost, all our datacentres are located within the UK.

Taking advantage of the cloud

Financial companies that have already migrated to the cloud have put themselves in pole position to benefit from the digital revolution taking place in the market. They are able to adopt and make use of advanced fintech solutions, develop and deploy new services at speed, and analyse big data using tools like AI and machine learning to discover new growth opportunities, predict market movements and find more cost-effective and efficient ways to operate.

With data centralised and synced, teams can collaborate on projects far more effectively, regardless of where in the world they work, employees can work remotely and customers can access their accounts, services and communications via the gamut of devices that they now make use of.

The speed at which the cloud operates also provides benefits. Servers and applications can be deployed instantly and workloads that would have taken weeks to carry out on traditional systems can be done far quicker. Indeed, the interconnectivity of the cloud provides a genuine opportunity for finance companies to benefit from the use of real-time data, enabling them to react swiftly to changes in the market.

Cutting costs

The growing reliance on IT in the finance sector has burdened companies with the ongoing costs of using it. The cloud provides significant opportunities to reduce and better manage those costs. By moving to the cloud, companies no longer need to invest in expensive hardware or pay for the running of a datacentre. Instead of capital expenditure, they shift to operational expenditure and have greater control over what is spent, by whom and when.

Additionally, the scalability of the cloud enables finance companies to increase IT resources on-demand. Whether catering for peaks in website traffic or undertaking resource-heavy processing, their system can access all the storage, bandwidth, CPU and RAM it needs to maintain service. The advantage, financially, is that this is charged for on a pay-per-use basis. Once the demand has ceased, the company can scale down and reduce costs.

Preparing for the future

The pandemic has not only hastened the drive for digital transformation across all sectors; it has also seen customers flock to digital in unprecedented numbers. This ‘push-me-pull-you’ relationship is driving the finance sector along the digital railroad. Consumers are pushing for better online services and customer experiences and financial companies are pulling new customers in by providing them. Increasingly, those services need cloud infrastructure and cloud-based applications to make use of technologies like AI, machine learning, IoT and automation.

Conclusion

Cloud technology opens a world of opportunity for finance companies, enabling them to innovate quickly, improve customer experiences and work smarter and more efficiently. At the same time, it provides a compliant environment in which to store their sensitive data and keep it secure.

How the Cloud Benefits Charities and the Public Sector

Posted on 03/05/202016/06/2021 by Tushar

Cloud technology brings significant advantages for all organisations, not just businesses. Today, it is being increasingly adopted by both charities and the public sector, including local authorities, healthcare providers, universities and government agencies. Here, we’ll look at the financial savings and operational benefits it can offer, as well as how it can provide a better service to your end-users.

Remote connectivity

Even before the pandemic forced people to work at home, charities and public sector organisations were leading the way with remote working. While many charities have people working around the country and, in some instances, around the globe, the public sector was dealing with austerity by shrinking office space to cut costs and having employees work remotely several days of the week.

One of the benefits of the public cloud is that it enables your employees to work from wherever they have an internet connection. Here, they can log in to your system and access your applications and documents securely. What’s more, data is stored centrally, not on individual machines, meaning that it is kept secure and that everyone has the latest version of files and information available to them. Indeed, modern, cloud-based remote working solutions allow colleagues to collaborate, share work and hold meetings online, no matter where on the planet they are based.

The benefits of remote connectivity are many. For example, you can reduce the size of your office space, allow employees greater flexibility over their working arrangements, recruit employees from further afield and ensure things like bad weather don’t prevent staff from working.

Financial savings

Charities and the public sector both increasingly rely on IT services to carry out many of their day to day functions. Running IT on-site, however, can be a major financial burden, especially for organisations that need to reserve as much of their budgets as possible to deliver frontline services.

Cloud migration can help cut IT costs dramatically. The main reason for this is that, in the cloud, you will be hosting your applications and storing your data on hardware belonging to your IT vendor. This means you will no longer need to purchase, regularly upgrade and maintain those expensive servers. Nor will you need to pay for the ongoing costs of an in-house datacentre, such as premises rent, high energy bills, insurance or security. And of course, your in-house IT staff will no longer need to manage or maintain that hardware, giving them more time to work on projects that benefit the end-user.

Greater security

Keeping data secure is an essential requirement for charities and the public sector, with organisations often handling sensitive information about individuals. Whilst a reticence to move this to the cloud can be understood, it is worth pointing out that the cloud is likely to be more secure than most in-house systems.

Unlike many charities and public sector organisations, cloud vendors invest significantly in cybersecurity to ensure they comply with their stringent security regulations. They employ security experts and deploy highly advanced security tools to keep their infrastructure and data secure. Indeed, even the datacentre premises are protected by robust security measures.

Additionally, the cloud allows all data to be centrally stored, enables organisations to implement strict logical control and access privileges and lets data be swiftly backed up, encrypted and integrity tested. For those requiring additional security, there is also the option of migrating to a private cloud, where a single client has dedicated use of their cloud infrastructure.

Staying online

Often hosting critical, public-facing services, charities and public sector organisations need their applications to remain available for their staff and end-users. For those with in-house datacentres, server failure can be a significant issue, in some circumstances putting lives at risk. Bringing a server back online can be a timely and expensive procedure that causes prolonged disruption to your services.

In the cloud, your applications are run on virtual machines which means they are not tied to any physical hardware. If there is a hardware issue in a cloud datacentre, the virtual machine is simply and instantly moved to different physical hardware and continues without any downtime or disruption. With exceptional levels of uptime, guaranteed by SLA, the cloud offers the high availability needed to stay online.

Scalability

One of the most sought after benefits of the cloud is its scalability. This is the ability of the charity or public sector organisation to use additional computing resources (storage, CPU, RAM and bandwidth) on-demand, at the click of a mouse.

There are two chief benefits of this. Firstly, is that it enables your organisation to cope with peaks in demand or heavy workloads, ensuring you don’t run out of IT resources when you need them most. For example, your website won’t crash if you get a massive spike in traffic, something which could be dangerous if dealing with an emergency situation.

The other benefit is the financial one. In the cloud, you will only pay for any additional resources as and when you need them, on a pay as you go basis. When demand reduces, you can scale down once again and save money. Achieving such scalability in-house would be difficult and expensive to do – you would need to purchase additional servers and leave them redundant just so they could be used in times of heavy demand.

Conclusion

Charities and public sector organisations are making increased use of the cloud to benefit in all the ways mentioned above. Indeed, the UK Government’s keenness to encourage cloud adoption has led to the launch of its G-Cloud. This is a marketplace of approved cloud vendors with framework agreements already in place, from which public sector organisations can buy services without needing to run a full tender or competition procurement process. Anteelo is an approved G-Cloud supplier.

Digital Success in 2021: Sustainability and Customer Experience

Posted on 28/04/202016/06/2021 by Tushar

The online market has radically transformed and businesses need to move with the times if they are going to stay relevant and competitive. In this post, we’ll look at the impact of sustainability and customer experience and explain what you need to do to stay ahead of the game.

The sustainable business

Consumers worldwide are becoming increasingly conscious of how their actions have an impact on the environment and society. This affects their choice of brands and the products and services they buy. Ideally, they would like their favourite brands to adopt more ethical approaches to the environment and society, but if not, they are prepared to find new brands whose values better align with their own.

What does this mean for online businesses? First, it means that companies need to be ethical. They have to try and reduce their impact on the environment by cutting carbon emissions, using sustainable resources, ditching single-use plastics and anything else that improves the natural world. At the same time, they will need to implement socially ethical policies: delivering diversity and equality of opportunity, paying fair wages and treating staff, customers and suppliers well.

Of course, ethical businesses should also communicate this to consumers. Getting the message out is important to remind existing customers and to inform potential new ones of the efforts they are making to be a sustainable and ethical business. This should be clearly communicated on websites, in blog posts, on social media and on other forms of communication.

What’s more, consumers expect responsible brands to apologise for and make amends for both historical and more recent mistakes. One of the UK’s major pub chains has recently been commended for apologising for one of its founders profiting from the slave trade and more recently has renamed pubs whose original names might be seen to be racially offensive. Such acts of contrition that show a clean break with the past and a desire to move forward more ethically have helped consumers see the business in a more positive light.

With 87% of consumers having a more positive view of companies that support social or environmental issues, sustainability has become an important battleground on which companies compete for new business. To be a successful online business in 2021, this is an area that calls out for development, not just for the sake of the business, but for the planet and society as a whole.

Customer experience

The other key area of competition is customer experience and for online businesses, this is often driven by the adoption of new technologies. In the digital marketplace, customer experience has real value for consumers: over 80% of them are prepared to pay more for products and services if the experience is great.

What do we mean by great customer experience? Today, it means 24/7 accessibility, speed, convenience and seamlessness. Customers expect personalisation, omnichannel shopping and omnichannel communications. They want presenting with the products and offers they are looking for, purchasing to be easy and delivery to be ultra-quick. What’s more, they want to be able to buy on any device (and in-store), have communications delivered via their channel of choice and they want the whole experience to be engaging and rewarding.

It’s a big ask – but one which many companies have already adopted and are benefitting from. Implementing digital transformation today will not put companies head of the field, but it will ensure they stay relevant to the modern consumer and help them catch up with and compete with their rivals.

It’s almost impossible to offer great customer service today without adopting cloud technology. The cloud is needed to analyse the data essential for generating customer journey maps, without which it’s impossible to offer truly personalised product recommendations or provide seamless experiences. It’s also needed to carry out data analytics to gain insights into new opportunities and ways to cut costs.

The cloud is also vital for making use of technologies such as AI, machine learning and automation, that help deliver improved customer experience. It lets companies deploy 24/7 website chatbots, send instantaneous automated messages via multiple channels, maintain control of inventory and delivery so that products remain in stock and arrive quickly.

The cloud also provides the ability to integrate various key services, such as websites, apps, social media channels, communications channels, in-store services, marketing services, production infrastructure and more.

Of course, the cloud is also the most cost-effective way to run all these services. There’s no need to purchase hardware, it provides the flexibility to scale up or down resources in line with demand, there are fewer security and IT management demands and businesses will be assured their apps remain available at all times.

Conclusion

In the 2021 marketplace, sustainability and customer experience have become the main areas on which businesses compete. These have become more important to consumers than price or products. To stay relevant, online businesses need to be more environmentally-friendly, socially ethical and deliver better customer experience. This may mean a shift in direction for the company and in how it markets itself. With customer experience, it also requires digital transformation and the adoption of cloud technology.

Cloud computing in construction industry: Benefits

Posted on 23/04/202016/06/2021 by Tushar

The cloud is already widely adopted within the construction industry; however, for companies that are still considering it and for those whose use is limited, here, we look at seven important benefits it provides.

1. Cost savings

Every penny matters in the construction industry, so the cloud’s ability to help companies work more efficiently and effectively is one of its chief attractions. Savings come in multiple forms. From an IT perspective, the move to the cloud and to a vendor’s infrastructure reduces the company’s need to run in-house datacentres that require expensive cap-ex investment in hardware and the ongoing datacentre costs. The scalability of the cloud, together with its pay-as-you-go charging model provides further opportunities for efficient usage.

Additional savings also come from using the cloud to monitor operations. Combining data analytics with artificial intelligence yields insights into business processes that invariably throw up more efficient ways to run businesses and thus reduce costs without affecting quality.

2. Access information from anywhere at anytime

In the cloud, all your data is stored centrally and is available online, regardless of where your teams are or what time. This makes it incredibly easy for employees to collaborate and access the most up-to-date, synchronised files.

This is highly beneficial for construction companies as the very nature of their projects means they are working on sites away from the office. It also makes it much easier for employees working on large sites or projects with multiple sites to get hold of the information they need.

3. More competitive bidding

While cost savings help improve the bottom line, they also help construction companies to be more competitive when bidding for new projects. By using cloud-based business intelligence, they will have a more detailed prediction of the project’s costs, a better understanding of component availability and can give a more accurate indication of other influential factors, such as the environmental impact of their work or how energy efficient the completed project will be. All these can help make the bid more attractive to potential customers.

4. Manage growth better

Opportunities are everywhere in the construction industry, but the nature of the sector means companies need to be clear about those which are right for their business. Today, when researching new market segments or territories, organisations are increasingly making use of cloud-based analytics to evaluate a wide range of internal and external indicators that give them a clearer picture of the challenges and advantages of these potential expansions.

5. Building Information Modelling (BIM)

Today, the construction industry is making far greater use of Building Information Modelling – a process that results in the development of a centrally stored project model that can be accessed, shared and updated by all parties. Based in the cloud, the BIM enables the company to collaborate with all stakeholders, including planners, designers, suppliers, those from other disciplines and other construction companies taking part in the project. By clarifying the exact project for everyone, this removes uncertainty and thus helps overcome budget, timescale and supply challenges while reducing the potential for conflict between the different parties.

6. Improve employee safety

Construction sites and the materials and machines used can be inherently hazardous and this makes employee safety one of the chief concerns of any company. Increasingly, organisations are looking at how cloud-based solutions can help minimise risk even further. Using the cloud enables companies to simplify and centralise the reporting of incidents over the internet, share data with collaborators and suppliers and then analyse that data to provide safety insights and develop new safety procedures and equipment more speedily for use on sites.

When predictive tools are used, this can then help companies better understand the safety risks of each new project, enabling them to put improved measures into place during the planning stage rather than as a reaction to an incident that happens once construction work has begun. It also helps factor safety into the price and timescale of the project.

7. More effective communications

The number of people involved in a construction project can be vast and includes not just the company but the customer, architects and planners, suppliers, sub-contractors and other construction companies. Keeping everyone in the loop and up to speed is vital to keep the project on schedule and budget, and to ensure that issues are dealt with swiftly and effectively.

Cloud-based communication systems make this far easier and quicker to do and ensure that communications can be accessed and traced more effectively. What’s more, rather than having to send copies of files in email attachments that can quickly go out of date, attaching links to files stored centrally in the cloud means information accessed will always be synchronised and up to date.

Conclusion

Construction companies have a lot to gain from using the cloud and there are many ways in which it can benefit. The biggest advantage, however, for those who have yet to adopt, is that doing so will put you on par with the majority that have already begun to make the leap as part of their digital transformation.

Techniques and Tactics concerning Hybrid IT

Posted on 23/02/202015/06/2021 by Tushar

As companies embrace hybrid IT, they must address both technology and the human side of change. There are several key actions to take:

Staff and train differently: As applications move from traditional platforms to the cloud, current IT staff needs to be trained and re-skilled. Companies should recruit developers adept in Agile methodologies. Siloes should be broken down, and the workforce should become more integrated, multifunctional, flexible and agile.

Overhaul change management: The existing governance processes, gates and approval procedures designed for traditional legacy IT environments are no longer appropriate in a cloud environment. Companies need to revamp their change management systems to allow changes to happen quickly and, using automated workflows, to reduce manual intervention.

Integrate cloud operations: As organizations move workloads to the cloud, the IT operations function should adapt to manage both on-premises and cloud-based applications. This new model, called CloudOps, can provide continuous integrated operations in a multi-cloud environment to enable rapid response to events, incidents and requests. Adding DevOps to the mix then utilizes automation, integration and organizational change to enable more frequent enhancements that result in higher quality software.

Automate support: To the extent possible, automate IT support functions. For example, the traditional trouble ticket system can be manually intensive and inefficient. Automation can improve service and free up IT personnel for higher-level activities. Longer term, companies will be able to deploy machine learning and AI to take log data from cloud-based systems and automatically take actions to resolve and even prevent incidents.

Manage “shadow IT”: Business units are often acquiring the cloud services they need because IT moves too slowly. At some point, those services must be integrated back into the traditional IT environment for operational and security reasons through a services governance model that encompasses hybrid IT elements.

In addition, it’s important for CIOs to have a handle on what the enterprise is spending on IT services. The only way to accomplish this is to adopt hybrid IT and demonstrate to business units that IT can support the pace and scale that the business requires.

Cloud Computing : 6 Most Common Applications

Posted on 20/03/201922/06/2021 by Tushar

Cloud computing has become very popular for businesses. As of 2018, over three-quarters of enterprises were already using it and more are adopting it every day. If you haven’t considered it yet, that’s possibly because you’re not sure what you can use it for. To give you an idea, here we’ll show you the six main ways it is being put to good use.

1. Big Data analytics

Today’s businesses collect vast amounts of data on all manner of things: customers, operational processes, logistics, machinery health, product condition and much more. The value of that data comes from making sense of it, using it to come up with solutions to problems or discovering new opportunities. To do this, however, you’ll need to conduct Big Data analytics and this requires the use of substantial computing resources, often over short periods.

Those resources would be incredibly expensive if you had to purchase them and for much of the time would stand unused. Convincing the finance director this was the wisest use of the company’s money would be a difficult challenge. The advantage of cloud computing is that its pay-as-you-go pricing means you can access all those resources for the times you do need them but not pay for them when you don’t. This way you can carry out Big Data analytics whenever you need but do so affordably.

2. File storage

While it’s true that you can store your files in many places, what makes the cloud so appealing is that files can be accessed, edited and shared anywhere with an internet connection and this opens up a variety of opportunities for mobile working, collaboration and even improved security.

What’s more, the cloud provides high-speed, high-availability access as well as offering scalability to increase or decrease storage as demand requires – again paid for on a per-use basis.

3. Testing and development

Developing a new application or platform in-house can be an expensive and long-winded process. It involves significant spending, time and staff involvement and requires the procurement, installation and configuration of hardware. This means it takes longer to complete a project and can put your company at a disadvantage with competitors.

Cloud computing can make testing and development quicker, less expensive and less complicated. This is because there are various pre-existing and perfectly suitable cloud environments already built and ready to use out of the box.

4. Disaster recovery

Lots of companies use the cloud as the solution for their disaster recovery needs. Continuous backups of your servers in the cloud mean that you’ll no longer need to pay for a separate, redundant DR site of your own. Not only is recovery much cheaper, it’s also far quicker, ensuring your business is back online in no time at all.

5. Data backups

Traditional methods of backing up data have tended to be complicated and time-consuming, often requiring portable drives or even tapes being shipped to remote sites for storage. This is also a technique that can back-fire if the drives are too small for the data or are discovered to be defective.

Cloud-based backup is far easier to carry out and more secure. You can schedule backups to meet your needs; store them remotely on virtual servers, knowing that if the physical hardware hits a problem the data is still available; they can be encrypted for increased security and checked to make sure the data is not corrupt. And as with all cloud storage, you can have as much space as you need without fear of running out.

6. The Internet of Things

The internet of Things is beginning to transform the way we live our lives and increasing numbers of enterprises are making use of it. An IoT system works by collecting data from large numbers of connected sensors and uses this to make intelligent decisions – often using artificial intelligence and machine learning.

To take advantage of the IoT, the cloud is needed to analyse that data and make insights from it. A smart traffic system, for example, can monitor traffic conditions across an entire area, discovering where issues arise and using AI to quickly reroute or slow down vehicles in order to prevent a hold up. This kind of intervention would be almost impossible to gather without the capabilities of cloud.

Cloud’s scalability is also important for IoT. As a company grows, so might the number of IoT devices it sends and receives information from. More devices mean it will need larger computing resources and this can be achieved quickly and easily in the cloud without the need for significant capital investment.

Conclusion

Cloud enables businesses to do many things that, without it, they would find more expensive, overly time-consuming or beyond their in-house IT capabilities. From basic solutions, like storing files and backing up data, to highly sophisticated processes, such as Big Data analytics and IoT data processing, the potential of the cloud is enormous. Indeed, what we have discussed here barely scratches the surface and there are even more developments yet to come.

Why Is The Cloud the Best Option for Customer Data Management?

Posted on 14/01/201918/06/2021 by Tushar

The more a company understands its customers, the better it will be able to build relationships, enhance the customer experience and deliver accurate, personalised marketing. Today, the tool of choice for providing these insights is a customer data platform (CDP). In this post, we’ll look at the benefits of using CDPs and why, to get the most value from them, they need to be deployed in the cloud.

What is a CDP?

A CDP is a database application that organises and unifies data into a consistent record that can be used by all the company’s systems. In doing so, it provides a comprehensive, all-touchpoint overview of customers, either as individuals or as members of various groups, which is invaluable for the analytics needed to inform decision making. The results offer companies credible, real-time data on their customer’s behaviour which can be used to help personalise marketing, improve customer experience and thus strengthen relationships.

Businesses collect data from a wide range of sources, these include IoT devices, website and mobile app behaviour tracking, purchase histories, emails, live chat interactions and information provided by the customer about their personal circumstances, such as age, gender, occupation, family, income and so forth. Often, much of this information is gathered and stored separately, with access to it limited to individual departments. When data is stored in these silos, no-one in the company has the full picture and this can have a negative impact on any decision making.

The benefit of a CDP is that it can take data from all these sources and unify them, giving all decision-makers the complete perspective they need to develop successful strategies. It allows them to pool personal information with behavioural, attitudinal and engagement data to understand the needs of the individual and discover patterns in customer groups. It can even help discover new groups that hadn’t previously been conceived.

The insights provided by analysing unified data enable the company to develop models that predict how customers’ attitudes and behaviours react to different stimuli, for example, how their shopping habits change at birthdays, how their investments may change if they have children, or how they respond during crises like coronavirus. Having this data enables companies to pre-empt changes in the market, helping them to best meet customers’ changing needs and do so faster than their competitors.

More than this, analysis also provides essential feedback on the decisions which have been made and the strategies which have been implemented, indicating where monies can be saved and where improvements can be made.

The importance of cloud

While using a CDP brings obvious benefits, there are challenges to deploying it effectively. With so much data being collected and analysed today, businesses need increasingly larger data storage and processing capacity. Providing this in-house can be expensive, with companies needing to purchase the necessary high-spec hardware and applications, employ IT staff to manage the system and pay for ongoing overheads like maintenance and power. As more data is collected, additional hardware will be required, all of which will need to be replaced when it becomes obsolete.

A cloud solution eradicates any requirement to purchase hardware and can lessen the cost of software licencing. All the infrastructure required is provided on a pay-as-you-go basis and is managed, maintained and updated by the vendor. This means that when additional resources are needed to undertake large scale analytics, you only pay for them when you use them, making it the most cost-efficient way to undertake the process.

A cloud solution also makes it easier for your IT team to focus on more business-oriented projects as the vendor will provide a managed service, as well as offering 24/7 expert, technical support to help your team deploy and run your system and applications.

Once your cloud-based CPD is deployed, it will then be available over the internet, meaning team members who need access to it can do so from anywhere they have an internet connection. This improves collaboration and allows teams to work remotely, anywhere in the world.

Another factor to consider is that, for many businesses, the internet is the source of most of their customer data, such as from websites, apps, emails, live chat and IoT devices. As most of these touchpoints are cloud-based, it makes sense that the data they gather remains in the cloud as it can be stored in the same data warehouse and thus be better managed and more swiftly processed.

Finally, but also of crucial importance, is that the cloud provides exceptional data security. Data can be backed up continuously, with backups being checked for integrity and being encrypted, ensuring the data is not only secure but can be restored almost instantly should there be a data loss. Access to data can be restricted using logical access while logins can be protected using single sign-on or multifactor authentication protocols. The vendor also provides a wide range of security measures, including firewalls, malware monitoring, intrusion prevention and so forth. All these measures can help ensure companies comply with data protection regulations like GDPR.

Conclusion

A customer data platform provides one of the most useful tools for companies undergoing digital transformation, enabling them to have previously unattainable insights into their customers and the marketplace. To make the best use of this, a company will need significant data storage and processing capacity. Cloud offers the most cost-effective way to provide the infrastructure needed, while also providing scalability, security and IT expertise. For more information about our cloud services, visit https://anteelo.com/.

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Introduction to Cloud Computing

Understanding How Cloud Computing Works

The Virtualization in Cloud Computing

How does Cloud Computing Benefit an Organization?

Operational integration

Better visibility of supply chain and inventory

Seamless supplier integration

Personalised customer experience

Business intel

A cost-effective IT solution

Conclusion

Cloud keeps financial data secure

Taking advantage of the cloud

Cutting costs

Preparing for the future

Conclusion

Remote connectivity

Financial savings

Greater security

Staying online

Scalability

Conclusion

The sustainable business

Customer experience

Conclusion

1. Cost savings

2. Access information from anywhere at anytime

3. More competitive bidding

4. Manage growth better

5. Building Information Modelling (BIM)

6. Improve employee safety

7. More effective communications

Conclusion

1. Big Data analytics

2. File storage

3. Testing and development

4. Disaster recovery

5. Data backups

6. The Internet of Things

Conclusion

What is a CDP?

The importance of cloud

Conclusion

Delivering excellence, collaborating across time zones.

Take a look at our global hideouts.​

Contact

India (HQ)

Atlanta, USA

London, UK

Dubai, UAE

Melbourne, Australia

Surabaya, Indonesia

India (HQ)

Atlanta

London

Dubai

Australia

Indonesia

Take a look at our global hideouts.