The infrastructure for better collaboration

As a recent study by IDC confirms, the attitude of German companies towards the cloud has changed significantly over the last twelve months. Whereas previously only individual projects or pilots were outsourced to the cloud, two-thirds of the companies surveyed now plan to use external services extensively for their IT over the next 24 months.

The drivers here are the specialist departments. The study "Cloud Computing in Germany 2017" confirms this trend not only for large companies, but also for SMEs.

Despite this change, concerns about security and availability still prevail in this country when it comes to moving data to the cloud.

But here, too, companies can ease their consciences by choosing the right IT service provider and cloud offerings.

In doing so, companies could benefit from cost and time savings as well as greater flexibility compared to on-premise solutions by outsourcing the operation of their service applications.

To ensure the greatest possible security for their data, companies should choose a local provider when selecting a provider. The location in Germany ensures the protection of service data in accordance with German or European law.

The data center should also be certified to ISO 27001. ISO 27001 is the leading international standard for information security management systems.

It defines the requirements for the introduction, implementation, monitoring and improvement of an information security management system (ISMS). This guarantees the protection of confidential data against hacker attacks, data loss and misuse or disclosure, and ensures faster recovery from this type of attack.

For particularly critical data with very high security requirements, there is also certification in accordance with the German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI), which is used primarily for processing personal data in the financial sector.

Availability

Availability is another issue that can cause headaches for companies moving their service data to the cloud. Availability of 99.9 percent per week is common, but it also means that applications are unavailable for around ten minutes per week in the worst case.

Calculated over the year, this corresponds to a loss of access of 8.7 hours. For a service company that offers its customers 24-hour service seven days a week, this might not be enough.

For a higher monthly fee, the reliability can of course be increased, for example to 99.999 percent. A small or medium-sized company operating on its own can rarely ensure only five minutes of downtime per year.

However, planned and announced maintenance times and updates are also usually part of the uptime for cloud providers. Service companies should therefore define these time windows precisely in advance in the SLAs with the provider.

Integration of third-party service providers

One of the biggest benefits of cloud computing for service organizations is easier collaboration between in-house and remote employees in different locations.

In the service sector in particular, there is a clear trend toward flexible integration of third-party service providers into the company's own processes. There are many reasons for this: Overcoming load peaks, purchasing special know-how, splitting high-margin and low-margin services, and even regional coverage.

To efficiently map the process of an "extended workbench" with various third-party service providers, companies need a modern infrastructure. A cloud-based approach is particularly well suited here:

The cloud provides a unified yet shareable infrastructure so that cross-enterprise data exchange can be implemented faster and more efficiently.

Investments in server infrastructure and licenses

Cloud computing also offers smaller and medium-sized companies, whose added value lies in production or services, the opportunity to professionalize the operation of their IT.

Thanks to the optimum technical equipment and broadband network connection of a cloud provider's data center, they benefit from higher performance and availability of their service applications. There is no need to invest in the purchase of licenses, server infrastructure, updates, operation and maintenance.

In addition, IT resources in the cloud are cheaper for companies because the basic costs (acquisition, operation, maintenance) are shared by several users.

Monthly billing in the subscription model according to the number of users creates cost transparency and facilitates controlling.

Handle load peaks easily

Another savings potential is available for service companies that have a seasonally fluctuating business. With cloud computing, they do not have to keep unused IT resources on standby for peak load times.

At the same time, they can easily handle heavy and unplanned usage loads and meet service level agreements at all times. The cloud can also shorten implementation times for new applications and services.

A good example here is the smart meter rollout in the energy sector. With the "Act on the Digitization of the Energy Transition," the Bundestag basically unleashed a gigantic IT project in October 2016.

By 2032, around 50 million electricity meters in Germany will have to be replaced and, along the way, a completely new IT infrastructure will have to be installed to operate them.

In order to handle this process in a timely and cost-efficient manner, it can happen that the company's own capacities are no longer sufficient and it is necessary to involve external service providers in the process on a massive scale.

This is one of the reasons why cloud-based metering solutions are currently in high demand. Firstly, in order to be able to quickly "switch on" external forces. But secondly, because the additional resources can simply be scaled back again after the rollout.

Conclusion

If organizations get serious about outsourcing service applications, they will find that the cloud approach offers many benefits and that concerns about security and availability can be addressed by choosing the right provider and cloud offering.