Over the past year,cloud computinghas dominated IT
discussions across the country, and rightly so. It offers
significant business advantages, especially as resources become
more constrained and IT departments struggle to add business value
while maintaining existing infrastructures.
Care must be taken, however, as not all cloud-based services are
created equal. Service delivery models vary greatly, from hosted
providers that replicate fragmented on-site technologies to those
offering sophisticated architectures. Benefits vary greatly
too.
So if the devil is in the detail, as always seems to be the
case, some practical tips for selecting the right partner could
prove useful.
Is the basic design right?
Tight integration of services at the provider level is critical.
In the case of
e-mail, this means security, archiving, continuity and policy
management.
The ability to provide a unified service eliminates the need for
multiple interfaces, reporting and policy management. Integrated
services reduce management workload and should be aware of each
other in a way that gives users visibility and access to their
e-mail while ensuring the evidential quality is maintained.
Can it lower IT costs long term?
Partnering with a cloud provider must, at all times, be a
low-commitment relationship. The IT department should maintain
complete control of user accounts and licence fees by paying for
access to applications on a per user basis with a transparent
pricing model. It should be able to centrally enforce company-wide
policies with real-time implementation without having to rely on
the service provider's helpdesk.
With cloud services, IT staff are no longer responsible for
administering patches and general infrastructure maintenance, which
frees up time to work on strategic parts of the business. For
example, Butterfield Bank, which has offices around the globe,
saves £750,000 per year with unified e-mail management - a
reduction of 75% compared with in-house e-mail management.
Can it offer business continuity?
A cloud provider must be architected to offer
constant availability and have rigid service level agreements
(SLAs) that back up its assertions. The SLAs must be set in stone,
well-documented and protect against all possible risks and
downtime.
Demand references from existing customers to compare your
situation.
On-demand e-mail must also be completely transparent and fully
interoperable with existing in-house e-mail systems and
processes.
For users, the experience with an application, such as Microsoft
Outlook, should be seamless and more sophisticated and intuitive
than fragmented in-house systems, providing more rapid access to
archived e-mails, flawless security and keeping employees working
even during outages.
Can it reduce the cost of e-mail
compliance?
Business leaders need to be realistic about the regulatory risks
of poor e-mail management. Currently, organisations are struggling
to manage the mountain of e-mail, let alone
comply with evolving regulations.
Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs and Solomon Smith Barney were each
fined $1.65m for failing to produce e-mails requested in the course
of an investigation.
Furthermore, our 2008 survey found that 69% of UK companies were
unable to produce a comprehensive e-mail audit trail of email
records, as required by law.
Partnering with the right provider of cloud-based services can
reduce the headache of managing and ensuring compliance by
providing an audit trail of all e-mail activity across all user
accounts. It must be made available at all times and involve
minimal input from company resources.
Delivering on promises
In summary, there is no one-size-fits-all cloud model
organisations need to evaluate a supplier for its understanding of
the issues faced across the business.
Selecting the right partner can deliver on the promises offered
by cloud computing: low-cost access to expert guidance and highly
tailored, powerful business applications.
Peter Bauer is CEO at
Mimecast