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Are you Maximizing your Cloud Opportunities?

Organizations are using Cloud services to increase employee efficiency, improve their competitive edge, and enhance their image and reputation. Over the past several years, Cloud services have expanded so that almost any resource or service can be rapidly provisioned at low cost and with a minimal amount of effort.

Emerging Cloud Services
Cloud services provide convenient and on-demand access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g. networks, servers, storage, applications, and services). To ensure you maximize your opportunities, make sure you are aware of new and emerging Cloud environments.

Cloud technology has expanded and allows almost any IT related resource to be offered as a service. By knowing the types of Cloud environments available, you can make informed business decisions and ensure you are maximizing your use of the Cloud.

When adopting new technology you should also consider the risks involved. Security Risk Assessments help you identify, reduce, and manage your risks related to Cloud environments. By identifying your Cloud assets you can ensure that the proper security controls are in place.

Everything and Anything as a Service
Everything (EaaS) and Anything (XaaS) as a Service describe the variety of Cloud offerings now available.
The following are examples of major services now offered by Cloud environments:

Communication as a Service (CaaS)
Database as a Service (DaaS)
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
Monitoring as a Service (MaaS)
Network as a Service (NaaS)
Platform as a Service (PaaS)
Security as a Service (SecaaS)
Software as a Service (SaaS)
Storage as a Service (STaaS)
Voice as a Service (VaaS)

Summary
Cloud environments have many benefits including pay-as-you-go utility models. When evaluating Cloud services, consider not only functionality but also security and availability of your information. IT risk assessments evaluate information security, service level performance, support (technical and user), redundancy and availability, as well as fail over and contingency plans.