Asia E-Pros has been providing industry-leading, cloud-computing solutions for every Malaysian-based business for nearly 10 years. Our Malaysian Cloud Transformation solutions offer hosted and hybrid cloud environments to support any sized network along with seamless service migrations and security solutions to handle any volume of customer service or company-wide interactions.
of all enterprises have reported that they have a multi-cloud strategy already laid out or in the works
of companies say they experienced operation improvements within the first few months of adopting cloud
of businesses say they've seen significant online security improvements after moving their data to the secure cloud
Cloud computing has been a revolutionary technology trend for businesses of all sizes across virtually every industry. See why companies are turning to cloud providers for their IT needs, and how you too can leverage this for your business.
Cloud computing has been a groundbreaking technology trend for businesses of all sizes across virtually every industry, and it’s a crucial component of a modern ecosystem and application integration strategy. Instead of investing in expensive hardware and maintaining a data center on their own, firms are turning to cloud providers such as Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure to provide flexible computing, networking, and storage resources.
How does an organization go about selecting and implementing a cloud computing infrastructure that’s a better match for its business ecosystem, meets workflow requirements, and provides ideal results?
You will learn answers to these questions and much more about cloud computing in this documentation section.
Within the last two decades, cloud computing has revolutionized how enterprises manage their IT systems and resources. In the past, companies interested in developing IT capabilities had to establish their own on-premise IT infrastructure. In order to achieve that, we had to lease a data center, buy new equipment and develop in-house capabilities to develop and maintain applications. Building and maintaining IT infrastructure proved to be prohibitively expensive for many small and medium-sized businesses.
With cloud computing, organizations can access data storage and computing capabilities on a need-to-know basis, at a significantly reduced up-front cost. In lieu of setting up their own on-premises IT infrastructure, companies can hire cloud infrastructure and component services from third-party cloud service providers such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform or Microsoft Azure.
The cloud infrastructure consists of all the hardware and software components required to provide cloud services to customers. The definition of a cloud infrastructure can be broad and complex. In essence, a cloud-based infrastructure consists of a variety of components, including, but not limited to:
– Servers
– Software
– Network devices, and
– Other storage resources
The cloud infrastructure also includes a hardware abstraction layer that enables resources to be virtualized and reduces costs through economies of scale.
All of these components are required to create applications that can then be accessed on the cloud. Applications can be retrieved remotely using the internet, telecommunication services, and WANs (wide area networks). An EDI provider could, for example, provide their services through a cloud-based EDI software model, allowing clients to access the platform without having to maintain a physical infrastructure on premises.
Infrastructural support for the cloud is not exclusive to the public cloud providers. Cloud computing is supported by all three of the most widely adopted cloud architecture models by virtue of using the same cloud infrastructure components.
Private clouds are those in which only a single organization has access to the cloud infrastructure. Private cloud architecture can be developed and maintained by on-site IT personnel or external service providers.
Public clouds are created by third-party cloud service providers who provide cloud resources to customers over the internet. Customers of public cloud providers take advantage of economies of scale and lower costs of computing power and storage by utilizing a multi-tenant environment model. In a multi-tenant computing environment, costs can be lowered, but sensitive data may also be exposed to privacy concerns.
In a hybrid cloud computing environment, private and public clouds interact with each other in a separate, but connected system. Data-sensitive organizations may choose to maintain data privacy by storing sensitive information on their own servers while hosting less sensitive applications and other resources in the public cloud, where the costs are often lower. Hybrid cloud allows organizations to maintain a private cloud environment, but also tap into public cloud services for additional capacity or computing functions.
In the IaaS model, an organization rents or leases computing power, data storage, networking and virtualization capabilities that belong to another company in order to access cloud computing services. These organizations depend on every component of cloud infrastructure to be successful in deploying and delivering their applications and other services:
Servers
As the name suggests, a server is simply a computer or device that provides a service to a user or customer. A web server uses the HTTP protocol to serve HTML or PHP files, a file server stores large amounts of information, a mail server sends e-mails over the internet, and more. When organizations deploy a private cloud, they may use dedicated servers to store data, while public cloud providers use a multitenant model and may provide services to more than one customer on the same server.
Network
Users usually access cloud resources over the internet, so third-party service providers must build and maintain the network infrastructure needed for this to occur. The infrastructure consists of physical wiring, switches, load balancers, and routers that facilitate the availability of cloud infrastructure for customers.
Storage
By using cloud storage services, organizations can store and manage their data on off-site file servers instead of building their own data centers. Providers like Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3), Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Storage allow users to manage and maintain data, as well as backup data remotely. Cloud-based data can be accessed via the internet or queried by other applications that have been deployed in the cloud. Cloud infrastructure can also be used to store cold data (data that is not actively used).
Virtualization
Among the many aspects of cloud infrastructure, virtualization might be the most important. In virtualization, the available data storage and computing power are abstracted from the actual hardware, enabling users to interact with their cloud infrastructure with a graphical user interface. In cloud computing, computing resources and data storage are often virtualized, so users are able to leverage these resources more easily and with less wasted effort.
Cloud migration is the moving of digital operations to the cloud. In most cases, it involves moving data from on-premises data centers or legacy infrastructure to the cloud. The best way to describe cloud migration is that it’s like relocating physical assets, except it involves moving digital assets from one data center to another instead of packing everything up and moving it.
Now let’s learn about the benefits of cloud migration. There are a lot of them, and they impact every part of your business.
1. Cost-efficient
Moving applications to the Cloud could have a significant impact on your business’ bottom line. By moving online, you can avoid the costs of buying, maintaining, and eventually replacing expensive data centres and on-site servers.
Rather, you can rent storage from a hosting company (or in this case, let Asia E-Pros do the leasing and management for you). This means they pay for the hardware and facility costs on their end, allowing you to focus on other aspects of your business.
2. Scalable
Cloud solutions also tend to let you pay for what you need. Asia E-Pros will be able to meet those needs as they evolve.
Your business may experience a sudden breakthrough, an incredibly rapid growth period, or the need to expand its storage capacity to keep up with future demand. A significant benefit of moving applications to Cloud computing is that if and when that happens, you can scale with agility, without significant hardware investment.
3. Secure
If we had to rank them, this would probably be in the top 5 cloud migration benefits. The data stored in the cloud is encrypted, meaning only people you allow can see it, which gives you total peace of mind. In contrast, legacy hosting providers often overlook their security, and offer no up-to-date features to help you update your internet presence.
Cloud access is the safest way to operate your business. If your devices are kept safe, you can overlook data safety without comprising on device efficiency.
4. Speedy disaster recovery
There are many reasons that likely motivate businesses to migrate to the cloud. One reason is that it provides disaster recovery in the event of a natural disaster.
The cloud puts your data in your hands – even if there’s a disaster, you’ll still be able to access your systems.
5. Greener
Thanks to advances in cloud computing, doing away with on-site servers and off-site recovery systems has been a very popular trend of late. This can be a significant cost saving for a company, not only because it means the office is able to save on rent, but also due to the energy consumption aspect of on-site servers. Cloud computing saves your company energy by automatically scaling the servers to your needs, and because you’re paying for what you use, it can lower your carbon footprint.
6. Enables remote working
Cloud computing makes it easier than ever to facilitate collaboration between offices across the world. This also has the added benefit of reducing the carbon footprint that they leave behind, as people are able to work remotely, meaning less commuting and fewer cars on the road.
COVID-19 showed us the importance of cloud-based work in an era where in-person communication is getting sparse. This has proven to be a successful option in terms of employee happiness, so it makes sense that the next request will be for more flexibility than ever before. Migrating to the Cloud might be a necessity, then, when it comes to retaining and attracting the best people.
7. Encourages collaboration
A company can always do better when it has the best team members working together in a collaborative and cooperative manner. An advantage of migrating to the Cloud is that people located in different locations or operating on limited resources can still work with one another easily and efficiently.
Software hosted in the cloud also enables multiple users to collaborate on documents at the same time. This means different team members can edit and save changes in a single, centralized location, without having to worry about each document containing the most up-to-date information. They also help avoid sending an older version of a document to customers or partners that has been edited by someone else.
8. Time-saving
The benefits of putting your legacy systems into a cloud computing solution are huge. Not only will you save a ton of time when it comes to rolling out new software to your employees, but the migration process is also relatively easy with Asia E-Pros.
Your IT department will quickly free up their time. Additionally, collaborative Cloud-based tools make it easier than ever for teams to communicate and work together. All of this means more time spent by more people being more productive.
9. Always up to date
Security should be one of the main considerations for businesses looking to use Cloud computing.
One benefit of Cloud computing is that it helps you avoid monitoring and managing security threats to your data. Your hosting provider already takes care of them so you can use your resources for more important stuff.
10. Future-proofed
The last of 10 reasons why you might want to migrate your IT services to the Cloud is about emerging technologies. They are becoming increasingly prevalent among big businesses and it’s only a matter of time before they become central in your operations too.
Connected to 5G networks and aided by AI and Machine Learning, Internet of Things-enabled devices are revolutionizing business operations across all industries. Each likely to be utilising or connecting to Cloud computing in some way. So if you want your business to be future-ready, migrating to the Cloud is a must.
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