It isn’t surprising that in the push to embrace the Cloud, some things get forgotten. What’s more remarkable is that a central piece of the jigsaw, your connectivity to the Cloud, is not considered thoroughly enough.

Atlas have put together a straightforward guide of the key areas to consider when selecting your Cloud connectivity, to help you understand the key role that connectivity plays within Cloud technology.

Bandwidth

Moving to and accessing your data in the Cloud are two distinct operations, that need to be considered operationally and financially.

How good is your broadband connection today? Can it be expanded? What is the cost of expansion? Are all good starting points when embarking on the Cloud journey.

If you find that your current connection is under pressure, the additional load of accessing your services in the Cloud is only going to create operational problems.

Many industries also experience peak trading times including Christmas or tax season, and have to provision for the maximum bandwidth they will need, even though they will still be paying for it when they are not using it.

Some form of scalable (or liquid) bandwidth option is advisable to match these variations in demand. Those options, however, are not commercially common in the marketplace but are available in certain scenarios.

Latency

In most cases organisations access their Cloud platform via the Internet, but the Internet is a medium that is the most variable in performance.

The best Cloud connectivity in terms of performance will almost always be the one with the smallest number of transit “hops” and least variation of speeds.

Equally, the speed and management of your connection to the Cloud Platform at the provider end, is often out of your control. Traffic is managed, and by how much may seem like small print but is important to understand. Are you sharing a connection to your cloud servers? Is there bandwidth guarantees at the far end? Are key questions to ask your provider.

Taking a motorway analogy, the best solution is to have less distance to travel and with some understanding of how good the route is between you and your Cloud Platform. This will require you to know exactly where your data is being located.

Sourcing locally will help mitigate this issue, by physically being close to the source your connection will be simplified, faster and easier managed in the event of any issues. Trialling and testing is also recommended best practice.

Reliability

Your connection to the Cloud needs to be reliable. This may seem obvious, but do you know what service level your Internet connection has on its performance? Or how quickly it will be fixed if your connection fails?

Most businesses connect via standard broadband, but the consistency of performance as well as the service level in the event of failure may not be up to the job. The impact of this on your business needs to be evaluated when selecting your level of reliability.

Certain industries, including the financial sector, also have specific regulations that demand synchronous replication & your connectivity will need to be able to accommodate this to guarantee compliance.

Higher-grade connections, with greater consistency and service levels, are available but they do come with a cost. That cost, however, can often pale into insignificance if your connectivity isn’t considered and starts to impact on your day to business.

If you’re still not 100% sure if you are Cloud ready, a member of our team would be happy to give you a free evaluation of your connectivity options. Contact 028 90786868.