Digital Transformation and Build your Organization

 Cloud Features

Five core features of cloud computing make it essential to

digital transformation:

1. Infinite capacity: Storage and compute resources are essentially unlimited.

2. On-demand self-service: Users can unilaterally provision computing

resources without requiring human interaction from the cloud provider.

3. Broad network access: Users can operate on the cloud through traditional

telecommunication services like Wi-Fi, internet, and mobile (e.g., 3G, 4G, or

LTE) on nearly any device, which means cloud computing is accessible

anywhere.

4. Resource pooling: Cloud providers serve multiple users through a

multitenant model, enabling a pool of physical and virtual resources to be

dynamically assigned and reassigned according to each user’s demand—

thereby reducing resource costs for all users.

5. Rapid elasticity: Resources can be automatically, seamlessly, and rapidly

provisioned and deprovisioned as a user’s demand increases or decreases.

Cloud Deployment Models

Beyond its core technical features, two aspects of cloud computing—the deployment model (who owns the infrastructure) and the service model (what type of services areprovided)—have significant impacts on business operations.

There are three different deployment models, determined by

ownership:

• Public cloud is infrastructure available for use by anyone. It is owned, managed, and operated by a

business (e.g., AWS, Azure, IBM, or Google Cloud) or a government. The public cloud has gained significant traction with corporations due to its infinite capacity, near-real-time elasticity, strong security, and high

reliability.

• Private cloud is infrastructure owned by and operated for the benefit of a single organization—effectively a data center, or collection of data centers, operated on a cloud model by an organization for its exclusive use. An organization’s private cloud often has limited elasticity and finite capacity because it is gated by hardware.

• Hybrid cloud combines private and public cloud infrastructures. Hybrid cloud infrastructure is a

dynamic space, where public cloud providers are offering up dynamic extensible private cloud

environments (e.g., AWS GovCloud) within a public cloud, thereby offering the best of both worlds.