Public, private, or hybrid—what suits your agency best?
Once a novelty, cloud networks now personify the modern workspace. Businesses leveraging cloud deployments typically enjoy enhanced flexibility and productivity. Moreover, with the rise of remote work, the cloud has become crucial in attracting and retaining valuable talent. However, maximizing the benefits of your cloud network depends on selecting a deployment model that aligns with your organization’s goals. If you’re considering the cloud for your agency, you’ll need to choose between public, private, and hybrid options. Let’s explore the differences to help you determine the best route for your business.
Public Cloud Deployments
Public cloud networks rely on the infrastructure provided by third-party cloud service providers. In this setup, companies utilize shared resources and are often charged based on a pay-as-you-go model. Let’s delve into the pros and cons of this deployment model.
Pros:
Greater accessibility: Public cloud providers often have a large service area, meaning agents can access vital tools and data from any location.
Easier scalability: Public cloud providers typically offer flexible pricing models, which can be ideal for agencies seeking to scale their infrastructure up and down depending on business demand.
Better focus on core business goals: Migrating to the public cloud offloads IT management to a third party, which empowers agencies to focus more on their transactions and customer relations.
Cons:
Security concerns: Despite their robust features, the fact that resources are shared on a public cloud may trigger potential security and privacy concerns.
Third-party dependence: Using the public cloud means your IT setup becomes largely dependent on a third-party provider.
Cost overruns: Public cloud is rightly celebrated for its flexible pricing, but without careful due diligence, it can also lead to cost-overruns.
Private Cloud Deployments
Private cloud networks are designed for the exclusive use of a single organization and are managed either by the network’s owner or third-party. Here are a few of the benefits and potential drawbacks.
Pros:
Customized security: Private networks enable administrators to create customized security controls and exercise greater data sovereignty, which greatly assists with compliance in regulated industries like title insurance.
Performance gains: Plus, with private networks being designed for exclusive use, companies can potentially gain more consistent network performance.
Effective resource allocation: Private clouds permit more effective control over digital resources, which optimizes an organization’s productivity and cost-effectiveness.
Cons:
Up-front investment: Private clouds can involve sizable up-front costs, as businesses will need to invest in infrastructure like servers and networking equipment.
Rigid structure: Relying on private clouds can pose problems for agencies if they want to make changes to their deployment setup. Investing in additional infrastructure may be required to support higher-intensity workloads.
Higher maintenance costs: Maintaining a private cloud necessitates that agencies continually invest in sufficient resources like specialized IT knowledge, which can potentially strain budgets that could go toward other revenue-producing activities.
Hybrid Cloud Deployments
Aside from these two options, there is also the hybrid cloud deployment model, which combines elements of both public and private clouds. Hybrid-cloud organizations will typically host some resources, data and workloads within a private cloud while also utilizing third-party providers like AWS or Microsoft Azure. Check out the pros and cons of this approach.
Pros:
A fluid model: Hybrid deployments can easily scale to meet fluctuating demand within the real estate industry and ensure optimal resource allocation.
Cost-effective: Hybrid clouds afford agencies flexibility in how they use their cloud infrastructure. Agencies can leverage the public cloud during peak worktimes and avoid overprovisioning their private network.
Customizable security: Hybrid cloud businesses can create customizable security measures regarding where they house critical data or workloads. Agencies deal with highly sensitive information. With hybrid cloud, this data can be kept out of a public network and managed on-premises for greater peace of mind.
Cons:
Complex management: Managing a hybrid cloud can be complex. Agencies must be adept at navigating diverse environments and integrating various systems into a cohesive whole.
Cost control: Using multiple cloud networks can cause billing headaches, as users sometimes find it difficult to track resource allocation, transfer data and reduce waste.
Regulatory compliance roadblocks: Finally, hybrid clouds can create security and compliance risks with data that is moving between environments. Agencies will need to implement stringent controls to secure data that is “in-transit” between networks as well as data “at rest” within a single network.
Final Thoughts
As with any critical IT decision, all cloud deployments have their pros and cons. Before pulling the trigger, spend time talking critically about your business and what will work well for your team. Some considerations to mull over include your security requirements, budgets, current IT capabilities and future business projections. After having these important conversations, you can reference our list of pros and cons to select a network that will take your business to the next level.
How can you decrease your IT stack’s carbon footprint?
In a time of increasing focus on sustainable business practices, companies are rightfully looking to improve their technology suite’s energy efficiency. “Green IT” refers to environmentally friendly processes for building and maintaining an IT stack. Here, we will talk through this concept and the benefits it can deliver to your entire organization.
Devise a green IT strategy
As we’ve discussed before on this blog, making significant changes to your IT setup and infrastructure requires planning ahead of time. Green IT initiatives are no different. Begin by establishing a baseline for your energy usage and consumption. You will gain clear data that you can then use to establish green IT goals. Next, create a project plan that lists out each step you will take to achieve your objectives. A green IT project plan could include points like:
Upgrading hardware with more energy efficient models or versions. Pay close attention to where you are sourcing your IT equipment. Look for energy star-certified devices. Try to build a stack that includes upgradable design components, which will allow you to extend its total lifecycle. You can also look into buying hardware certified exclusively under the Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool (EPEAT) program.
Collaborating with hosting providers that adhere to green principles. When searching for a provider, look at things like PUE ratings, carbon offsets and more. This article offers other helpful pointers.
Ensuring your devices manage power usage effectively. The first step to maximizing how your devices use power is to create a universal policy for your agency. Then, implement it by configuring systems and enabling power-saving processes like device sleep and hibernation modes.
Considering cloud migration. Moving your IT ecosystems to the cloud offers some energy advantages over on-prem setups. These are on top of a host of other benefits cloud can bring to your business.
With any organizational initiative, your strategy and project plan should be organized around a timeline and have a clear budget attached. This will ensure that your green IT efforts continue to move forward and that your resources remain properly allocated.
Going green brings the benefits
Embracing green IT is not just about being environmentally conscious; there are other tangible benefits for businesses as well. For one thing, green IT can potentially lower your energy bills, reduce server needs and even enhance cyber resilience – lowering costly downtime in the process.
But that’s not all. Green IT usually enhances a business’s brand reputation. Customers increasingly desire to support green businesses over less environmentally friendly competitors. Data shows this is particularly true with younger consumers, as 80 percent of young U.S. adults say that they are willing to pay more for sustainable products.[i]
What’s more, green IT can help your agency become nimbler and more future-ready. Cloud computing is often part of green IT and a key technology driver behind the rise of remote work. With workers now ranking flexibility as one of their top considerations when choosing a workplace, offering telecommuting can dramatically improve recruitment and retention efforts.
Employee experience and overall satisfaction can also be impacted by creating an environmentally friendly IT suite. Green IT solutions are typically more modern and deliver a smoother working experience to employees as an auxiliary benefit. Also, being more environmentally conscious may boost employee morale. Workers often rank sustainability highly, and 80 percent claim they want to help their company reach climate or ESG goals.[ii]
Toward a greener future
Businesses are always wrestling with competing priorities – one being the need to embrace sustainability while growing productivity and profitability. The good news? With your IT suite, you can do both simultaneously. Taking a sustainable approach to your technology solutions, systems and setups will bring you tangible benefits. That makes it a goal well worth pursuing.
Cloud computing can increase your firm’s scalability, flexibility and productivity.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, chances are you’ve heard quite a bit about the cloud over the past decade and a half. Anyone with a smartphone has at least a basic understanding of this type of computing. Yet the cloud is far more than a convenient place to hold photos, videos, documents or other data for individual use. Cloud computing has, in fact, become an integral component of how today’s businesses operate. It offers firms unprecedented ability to scale their operations, off-load cumbersome maintenance, improve productivity and even cut costs. Let’s look deeper at the advantages it offers to small and large businesses alike.
Expanded Flexibility The most obvious advantage of cloud computing is expanded flexibility, which can mean a couple of things. First, our economy is experiencing tremendous upheaval, with the Great Resignation and the ongoing push for hybrid work shaking old paradigms to their core. Cloud computing represents an incredible opportunity for businesses to free their workers from being tethered exclusively to on-site technologies, giving them access to the tools, documents and systems they need from anywhere at any time.
The second way cloud computing improves flexibility is by supporting customization. It’s highly likely that your business’s IT needs will grow and change over time. By migrating systems to the cloud, adding new seats, deploying new functionality and carrying out updates becomes much easier.
Cut Costs Businesses must always be mindful of their costs, which is another advantage cloud computing brings to the table. The cloud can reduce IT spending in several ways. First, when you migrate to the cloud, you can say goodbye to dealing with expensive hardware, which the cloud vendor owns and manages off-site. Lower maintenance comes along with cloud adoption as well, with responsibilities also transferred to the vendor and allowing you to reduce your internal IT budget. Don’t discount productivity gains either. With cloud computing, companies can easily update their systems. Staff then will have more time to focus on creative work.
Increase Recruitment Closely connected to the issue of worker flexibility are recruitment and retention. Cloud computing is a key enabler of the hybrid worker revolution, as it supports communications and collaboration solutions like UCaaS, CPaaS, CCaaS, DaaS and more. With the demand for hybrid or fully remote work on the rise, having the infrastructure to support these workers is a fantastic advantage when trying to attract the best talent.
Be Mindful of Security If you choose to adopt cloud computing for your agency, always remember to inquire about the vendor’s security and data protections. In a heavily regulated industry that deals every day with sensitive information, agencies must be mindful of the security of their technology systems. The good news is most cloud computing vendors will offer products and services that already feature robust safeguards like DDoS protection, data integrity and 24/7 support. However, there is a great deal of variation between providers, and it is always a good idea to inquire directly about your security needs to ensure you have adequate protections in place.
Final Thoughts Each year that goes by seems to validate the increasing adoption of cloud computing. With cloud computing often leading to additional flexibility, higher productivity and cost savings to boot, it’s no wonder more businesses are seeing it as a powerful method to gain new efficiencies and spur exciting growth.
Do you want to learn more about cloud computing and how it can help your business? Check out this great article. And if you’d like to discover top companies that provide cloud services, this piece details some of the top companies in the field.
