Virtualization to Cloud — What Small Businesses Need to Know

By Matt Smith

If your virtualization implementation is going well, the next step may be deploying a private cloud solution. With the cloud, small- and medium-sized businesses often see reduced costs and increased efficiency in management, provisioning, security, and scalability — beyond what is provided by virtualization alone.

If you are considering adopting the cloud in your organization, here are some things you need to know.

Virtualization vs. Cloud Computing – Differences and Similarities

Many people use the terms “virtualization” and “cloud computing” synonymously. While these two technologies are quite similar, there are some key differences to be aware of.

Virtualization refers to infrastructure. Virtual servers are deployed to support systems and applications such as email, database software, accounting applications, and more. Virtualization allows one server to take care of more than one application—thus, you don’t need as many physical servers to do the same amount of work. In addition, the focus is on decreasing expenses and making management easier by consolidating servers, storage arrays, networking equipment, and other machines.

Cloud computing, on the other hand, is a service that uses virtual architecture. Resources are pooled, centralized, and delivered to users as needed, like a utility. This allows for real-time provisioning at high performance of the resources that employees actually use.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology lists these five characteristics of cloud computing:

• On-demand self-service: Users can automatically provision resources and computing power without the need for human interaction.

• Broad network access: Resources are available over the network and can be accessed through standard clients like laptops, smartphones, tablets, etc.

• Resource pooling: Things like storage, applications, and even processing, memory, and bandwidth, are pooled together to serve multiple users/departments.

• Rapid elasticity: Automated provisioning allows resources to be scaled rapidly outward and inward to accommodate demand.

• Measured service: Services and resources are monitored, controlled, and reported.

It’s important to note that both virtualization and cloud computing can go a long way toward decreasing your overall IT burden and reducing IT-related costs. The cloud simply takes things a step further.

Making the Most of Your Virtualization to Cloud Deployment

So, what do you need to know before taking the plunge into the cloud? Consider the following points. And while this list is not comprehensive, it will put you on the right track.

Centralize your data and processes. The cloud comes with some distinct security benefits. In addition to the management advantages of cloud computing, centralizing your data and processes can actually offer some unique security benefits. Information is not spread out across many devices and locations, which means a lesser chance of losing data if an employee quits or if an employee’s device is lost or stolen. It also allows everyone to work from the same up-to-date information. In addition, a cloud plus thin client model gives you more control over who has access to what data. With this model, endpoints can be locked down and controlled centrally, minimizing the risk of unauthorized access or tampering.

But these benefits don't mean that you can be lax about securing your cloud applications. Since resources reside on the same server, if one application is compromised, there’s a good chance that all applications stored on that server could also be compromised. Security is vital — especially for applications that are public-facing.

Remove the human element. The cloud is automated and self-service. These two aspects of the cloud can really alleviate a lot of the bottleneck associated with IT provisioning. Agility is a key benefit of the cloud, and to fully take advantage of this, you need to remove the human element as much as possible. Of course, this does have some risks — you may consider implementing access controls and validation limits to what users can change.

Save on IT. IT overhead can be scaled back dramatically as the cloud can save countless hours that your IT team spends on maintenance tasks. This can help you reduce your IT budget and give your IT team more time to take care of critical tasks.

Invest in high-performance equipment. Hardware plays a huge role in the success of both virtualization and cloud computing. To get the most from these technologies, you should invest in high-performance, high-capacity equipment. Though the initial expenditure may seem steep, you'll save money in the long run since you won’t have to constantly swap out servers and arrays. Using high-power equipment can also speed resource delivery and increase your employees’ productivity.

Take advantage of public and private clouds. You don’t have to choose between public and private -- don't get stuck in a private vs. public cloud paradigm. Often the best choice is to deploy a private cloud while still taking advantage of innovations made by public cloud vendors — in other words, use the public cloud for specific applications where it makes sense. This hybrid cloud approach allows SMBs to take advantage of the best approaches for them in every case.

Go virtual when it makes sense.

Just because you can go virtual doesn’t mean you have to virtualize everything. In certain instances, you may choose not to implement a cloud computing solution. With both virtualization and the cloud, adoption should only happen where it makes sense. Mission-critical or demanding applications, for example, may need their own dedicated hardware.

Are you moving to the cloud? What has been your experience?