Use of public clouds by commercial enterprises

The enterprise cloud computing refers to solutions designed and targeted specifically at commercial enterprises. These usually take the form of private and managed cloud solutions marketed to large companies. However, the cost of private and managed solutions can be a bit prohibitive to the business user seeking an affordable solution. This has led to increased adoption of public clouds to provide cloud computing functionality within the business environment. However, most businesses find it difficult to understand the best approach to adopt the same.

Enterprise cloud computing has two key considerations before implementation; first, security and second, reliability. Security concerns seek to ensure that the cloud network is impervious to attacks that seek to compromise service delivery. When it comes to public clouds, one must realize that the level of security is usually a result of three factors. One, the applications used for service delivery must be not only well designed security wise but also well implemented. This means that the applications must be built on the latest information security principles and should be constantly updated as the principles evolve.

Secondly, the level of expertise provided is also a factor. The cloud service provider undertakes to provide the relevant expertise to ensure that their service is secure. This is paramount within public networks as it helps develop a preference for one service provider. Thirdly, the level of security consciousness exhibited by the end users is also a factor. The service provider can only act to secure their services so much; the end user must secure their end. This is usually done by selecting strong passwords and only accessing the service over secure networks.

Reliability deals with the stability of the system. For a public cloud to be used for enterprise cloud computing, the system must be stable. This means that there should not be outages of service delivery on the network often. The cloud system designed must have high uptime. Furthermore, it should not require long periods of service outage for maintenance and repair. They are best used where the provider is willing to provide Service Level Agreements that ensure service delivery of dedicated quality.

Service level agreements SLA refer to contracts that determine the level of service the provider undertakes to provide. They also state the delivery methods and remedy for inability to deliver such. Some public network providers are now willing to create these for the business user at a low premium cost.