Data Backup Digest

Using the cloud in an IT solution is increasingly becoming more popular. The market is rapidly growing and businesses like Google and Amazon are doing their best to get a slice of the pie. According to a recent Gartner study, spending on public cloud services is growing at 28% a year. Even more staggering is that private cloud spending is increasing by three times that amount. If those rates continue then total spending on cloud computing will be at $240 billion by 2016.
As with any emerging market, there is always room for specialisation. This comes in many forms, but this article will look at three: Desktop as a Service (DaaS), Metal as a Service (Maas) and Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS).
First of all, let’s look at DaaS. Managing desktop computers is a vital part of the majority of modern businesses. However, this has presented problems for IT departments when it comes to managing the systems. The main issue lies with expense, since kitting out a large organisation with desktop computers can be a costly procedure due to the hardware. Maintaining these systems every day can have a real impact on time. This is where DaaS steps in.
Using DaaS means that administration can be centralised and savings on hardware will be made in the long run. Desktop virtualisation was originally touted as the solution, but this came with a lot of upfront costs and complexity issues that put a lot of businesses off. DaaS brings benefits of a quicker desktop deployment, greater security and decreased downtime.
Secondly, let’s turn to MaaS. This was created by developers of the Ubuntu Linux operating system and it is designed to help with and automate the process of deploying whole physical servers, as opposed to virtual machines. A lot of people disvalue MaaS as a cloud service, but it certainly serves a purpose. Although a lot of servers are virtualised in business (statistics suggest it is heading towards 70%), there are still a lot of applications that run on metal. MaaS will allow any application to run in the cloud. It is quick, scalable and makes deploying and protecting a server infrastructure simple.
Finally, time to explore DRaaS. The fact of the matter is that disaster recovery is still a very important service. IT departments often have to try and cope with cost reductions, especially in a bad economic climate. Organisations may be running on old hardware and this is bound to cause problems. Hardware failure and human error are the highest causes of outages, but estimates state that 2011 weather related disaster costs were at around $150 billion worldwide (up 25% on the previous year).
Indeed, cloud services are also under pressure to stay up all the time – they are, after all, hosting a whole lot of data. Every time they have a major outage it will be noted and criticised. As a lot of businesses rely on cloud storage it can have quite a negative impact on their services should they go down. Having recovery systems in place is vital.
Services like DaaS, MaaS and DRaaS are important when it comes to cloud computing. They will help reduce costs, improve quality and heighten efficiency.