All posts by Rob Mackle

How the Cloud Helps Companies Reach Mobile Customers and Employees On the Go

June 15, 2015 Rob Mackle

We live in a mobile and portable world. People have access to the Internet through a variety of devices ranging from their Tablets to Smartphones to Netbooks and Chromebooks. The cloud has the ability to tap into this market and makes it easier for companies to reach their customers as well as their employees, wherever they are.

In fact, the Internet and the cloud have brought customers and employees in closer contact with businesses because many businesses now take advantage of cloud based mobile applications for a variety of reasons. The cloud can help companies retain customers and even attract new ones. It also helps them keep in closer contact with their employees. How is is it able to do this?

First of all, some industries utilise the web to entice customers to purchase products and services while they are on the go using their portable devices. The hospitality industry, airline industry and even restaurants are an example of this. People oftentimes choose to access these services while they are in transit using their tablet, Netbook or smart phone. For example, they might book a hotel, an airline ticket or choose a restaurant with the help of cloud driven applications. Accessing the cloud makes it easier for them to do this. So, this is one way the cloud is able to help these industries increase their business and enhance their connection to their customers. However, it is just the tip of the iceberg. Many other industries can also benefit what the cloud has to offer in a variety of ways and loyalty reward programs are another example of how the cloud can help businesses reach out to their customers.

The manner in which the cloud can help companies initiate loyalty programs through the cloud is by using cloud driven web interfaces. This can help them encourage valued customers to purchase additional products and services as well helping them to reward and retain loyal customers. At this point in time, loyalty programs that are cloud driven are underutilised by the retail sector. This is an area where there is an opportunity for lots of growth. Digital membership program that offer customised email based programs has the advantage of being portable and easily accessible wherever the customer may be which can increase customer satisfaction. Aside from making customers more mobile, the cloud makes it possible for a company’s employees to be mobile as well.

Once a company has made the decision to use cloud based services, it will enhance the ability of its employees to access important data when they are on the road travelling for business. It allows them to access important files that are stored in the cloud. All they need is an Internet connection that can be accessed through a portable device like a tablet or smart phone. In addition to making data easy to access the cloud allows business travellers to effortlessly connect and collaborate with colleagues wherever they happen to be.

So, thanks to the cloud, customers and employees are can roam away from home worry free. Customers can purchase products and access services while employees can communicate and collaborate with colleagues and access the data they need while they are on the road. The cloud therefore makes being mobile a breeze.

What are the Most Attractive Features of the Cloud?

June 3, 2015 Rob Mackle

What are the most attractive features of the Cloud? Is it the its dependability? Its scalability? Its flexibility? Its high availability? and/or its disaster recovery features? Well, it all depends on what your company’s needs are.

If your company has a low Recovery Point Objective (RPO) and RTO (Recovery Time Objective), then the cloud will be the right choice for you. Cloud vendors are able to promise uninterrupted customer service and 99.999% (with five nine’s) uptime for a variety of reasons, including the creation of hot sites and replication sites as part of their basic service. You can look forward to continuous, and for the most part, uninterrupted service if you are a cloud customer. In fact, disaster recovery is automatic with the cloud. Loss of data and time due to interruptions in service are not issues for cloud based services. This is a very appealing feature for many companies.

Scalable
Other companies might value the fact that the Cloud is adaptable and can be tailored to meet its growing needs. If a business needs to expand its cloud services, it can do so immediately, with no delay. A company can have access to cloud services as soon as they require them because hardware and software do not need to be purchased in order to upgrade a company’s service.

Fast
When a company opens a new branch office, there needs to be no lag time to offer the new office access to the head office data, and files on the web, thanks to the cloud. This gives companies greater flexibility, knowing that their employees can have access to data in the cloud almost as soon as they need it. It makes opening new branch offices much easier. In fact, it might just be a deciding factor when a company decides to expand its operations.

Mobility
Then, there are companies that might value the fact the cloud mobility offers its employees. The cloud makes it possible for business travellers to travel light, and access their data or documents anytime, wherever they are in the world. They can become paperless travellers needing only a smartphone, tablet or notebook in order to access the cloud. Travelling for business has never been so easy, thanks to the cloud.

Inexpensive
And finally, some companies may simply value how cost effective it is to access cloud based service. No huge capital outlay is required to engage with the cloud and cloud related costs can be managed very efficiently. For cost conscious companies, the cloud is a godsend allowing them to add cloud based services as they need them and not having to worry that it will break the bank.

Therefore, the cloud has many attractive features which will increase over time as cloud technology keeps improving. It just depends which features your company values most, but rest assured that your company won’t be disappointed by what the cloud has to offer.

Should Healthcare Professionals and Healthcare Service Providers Use the Cloud for Storing Patient Data?

May 20, 2015 Rob Mackle

Historically, healthcare professionals and healthcare service providers stored their patients records the old fashioned way — on paper in brown folders. With the advent of computer technology, they had the option of storing their patients sensitive medical information in a local computer file as well as the old fashioned way. Today, thanks to cloud computing and data storage services, they can store their patients data in the cloud.

If a healthcare professional chooses to store their patients data in a computer program, the data could be lost if the computer system crashed, stolen or caught fire. If there is no paper backup, the sensitive and critical patient information could be lost forever. This is never an issue if sensitive medical data is stored in the cloud.

Storing patients data in the cloud has many benefits for healthcare professionals; including anytime, anywhere access, scalable storage, compliant, easy and affordable.
For example, cloud storage is flexible, allowing the health professional to scale up or down based on demand for storing patients records. In the past, healthcare professionals and service providers had to constantly acquire additional storage space for their patients records the old fashion way by buying physical folders, hard drives and/or upgrading the computer systems. This is inefficient and time consuming.

Cloud storage services that cater for the healthcare industry must have passed compliance requirements. HIPAA that came into effect in 1996 stipulates that patients’ data can never be lost or compromised under any circumstances. To comply with HIPAA, SEC, Sarbanes-Oxley and more, vendors have come up with innovative ways to secure data and fulfil compliance requirements by encrypting and backing up data to redundant geo-locations.

In addition, cloud computing can save the healthcare professional, healthcare service provider, and the patient some money by reducing the costs of maintaining IT infrastructure and software. It also saves money because capital intensive hardware no longer needs to be purchased, and could result in insurance premium savings, as well.
The portability of having patients records stored in the cloud means that healthcare professionals can review the records of their patients wherever they are at anytime. In addition, having information stored in the cloud, it also gives them piece of mind that valuable and irreplaceable patient information will never be lost.

Cloud computing can save healthcare professionals both time and money and can also help them become more efficient in the delivery of service to their patients. It is important to take your time and evaluate any cloud storage service and perform a due diligence by thoroughly testing the vendors for compliance and security before you sign up for the service.

The Challenges of Cloud Computing and How to Overcome them

May 11, 2015 Rob Mackle

Cloud computing is not without its challenges. All new technologies suffer from growing pains and Cloud computing is no exception. There are a number of issues that can arise when Cloud computing. However, the benefits of Cloud computing far outweigh the disadvantages. It is a cutting edge technology that, like any new technology, has growing pains as it continues to be tweaked and improved.

Like any new technology that is still developing, Cloud computing can develop glitches that need to be taken care of. Interoperability of a Cloud can be a huge setback for a business. However, standardisation organisations are currently developing solutions to deal with this problem, and while not foolproof, are a step in the right direction. Application delivery can be a challenge and sometimes whole codes have to be ripped and replaced to make it happen. But, you do not need to worry — your Cloud vendor will work with you to resolve any issues that you may have. So, despite the challenges there are many benefits that can be derived from Cloud computing.

In fact, the beauty of Cloud computing is that you do not have to buy new equipment and you do not have to worry about a making a huge outlay of cash. Cloud computing is essentially is a “pay as you go” service. You only pay for what you use and you don’t own the technology, you just use it. In addition, you always have access to the Cloud except in those rare instances when there is down time. If you need them, support services can be tailored to meet your needs, whatever those may be so that help is always available if you need it. No matter what your needs are, rest assured they will be taken care of.

Cloud services and Cloud technology are constantly improving. They are also becoming more sophisticated. One of the most exciting developments is the applications which offer opportunities for employees to interact and collaborate with their colleagues in remote locations. This is a helpful tool that not only allows companies to be more inclusive, but more productive as well. Employees that are part of Cloud collaboration feel like they are part of a team. So, this is a huge advantage that Cloud computing can offer to businesses. There are also a variety of services that can be included in a Cloud computing package, such as video conferencing, webinars and emails.

Despite some of the challenges Cloud computing has faced in the past, it has come a long way. As times goes on, it will continue to improve, and become more sophisticated. It is a technology that has infinite possibilities and the future is very bright for Cloud computing.

Mitigating and Avoiding Downtime – Part II

April 24, 2015 Rob Mackle

In Part I, we discussed the importance of having a service level agreement to keep cloud services available anytime, from anywhere in order to reduce downtime. If the service provider’s networks are available at all times, users need to worry only for their own infrastructure.

Having said that, however, downtime must always be monitored at all times using advanced network monitoring tools. Record of system outages or downtime should automatically be logged for analysis in real time. Admin should have the ability to enter identified names and email addresses in the system for notifications in case of failures.

Failover servers are programmed to seamlessly take over the service while repairs are carried out to correct the problems in the main server. In addition, help desks and trouble-shooting services offered by online backup services enable the customer to alert his service provider about any and every possible system difficulties that they may encounter in the use of the service. Backing up your data in the cloud has not only the benefit of safeguarding your data, but also minimising or eliminating the detrimental effects of down time for your company.

By putting your data in the cloud, you have the convenience that come with accessibility, scalability and mobility. In addition, you have protected your data from physical destruction, theft, natural disasters, operating systems and hard drive crashes. Cost savings, easy sharing and “set-it-and-forget-it” operations that comes with automated systems are additional benefits. At the same time, extreme care should be exercised in selecting a cloud based backup service provider so as to avoid any fly-by-night operators.

Small, medium and large enterprises use the cloud because not only it is effective and saves money, but also it mitigates downtime. Occasionally, cloud services might get interrupted for various reasons. Even Amazon’s AWS suffered downtime in the past.

To avoid downtime, it is suggested that you get a signed copy of the SLAs, have both on-premise and cloud services, perform a thorough risk analysis, and determine your true downtime cost per hour, which might not be an easy task as it requires complex assumptions and calculations. As cloud services are charged on “pay as you go” basis, calculating actual downtime costs becomes a moving target. However, other costs such as operational, salaries, connectivity, and so on can be figured out easily.

Downtime could possibly be avoided by developing a well thought business continuity and disaster recovery plans. It must be remembered that the cloud does not guarantee that you will have a 100% uptime services, rather, it mitigates the risks of downtime.

Mitigating and Avoiding Downtime – Part I

April 22, 2015 Rob Mackle

In this day and age, backing up your data is crucial to a smooth functioning of your company, be it a small, medium or large sized business. A loss of data can result in a significant loss of revenue for your company. In addition, data loss can cause downtime or an interruption of computing services. The solution to both of these problems is a simple one — back up your data online in the cloud.

Medical informatics, nuclear power stations, banks and other financial institutions, aeronautics/airlines, news and journalism; e-commerce and transaction processing or even online games industries would immediately feel the pressure of downtime or loss of data. A minor downtime and a loss of data in these industries could prove to be disastrous, as existing customers experience frustrations and may consider cancelling their services altogether; and would-be-customers could end up avoiding this particular service, resulting in loss of revenues.

Many contract defaults could be attributed to system downtime or loss of data, resulting in litigation and financial losses. These industries need to ensure high availability, reliability and alternate data access routes to safeguard against business losses, resulting from unplanned downtime, which is the time when computing services are unavailable for business operations.

Cloud backup service providers ensure that your data is safeguarded in the Cloud. Your data is in no danger of being lost. In addition, online backup service providers are a safeguard against downtime and ensure that your company will continue to operate regardless of hardware or software glitches, a natural calamity or just a power outage. System outages can have a serious impact on industries that access their computers 24 x 7 x 365. Others may be sensitive to the time of the outage. Peak hour outages can cripple business and have long-term repercussions on the business.

Online backup service provides offer service level agreements for their customers that spell out the guaranteed service uptime percentage value that they expect over the period of a month, typically five-nines, i.e. — 99.999%. Zero percent downtime indicates that the backup service provider has made arrangements to ensure that the customer has no system outages and the access to the server is made available at all times. Customers will, therefore, have to guard only against outages that may occur at their end of the network, giving them peace of mind.

In Part II, we will discuss further points on avoiding downtime.