Cloud: A Rose By Any Other Name….

The term “cloud” in technology often leads to confusion or misinterpretation. Vendors and customers alike will use “cloud” as a general term for a set of computer hardware that exists in a remote location and is managed to run software provided by others. However, who manages those resources and who can access them can vary widely and vastly impact the level of responsibility and cost incurred by the end customer.

For years, organizations with sufficient IT resources have been leveraging private cloud resources. A user can set up a server or virtual machine in the cloud just like he or she would do locally and use it as if it were their own. The resources provided by this cloud computing environment are dedicated to this single organization—which is where we get the term “private cloud”. There are no shared components across the cloud-hosting platform or from cloud environment to cloud environment.

Vendor software, like that of a logging recorder, sits on that virtual server, utilizing any required components like the operating system, memory, databases, etc.

For organizations utilizing private clouds or virtual machines for their software, maintaining the cloud environments becomes their responsibility. While software vendors are responsible for installing and maintaining their respective solutions, it is up to the organization to ensure their cloud resources operate efficiently. Software updates and patches are also part of their responsibility.

The second type of cloud environment is much more sophisticated. Instead of deploying software on servers that need to be managed from top to bottom, public cloud providers offer software that abstracts the concept of a server altogether. With this abstraction, parts of the cloud infrastructure are shared among multiple users. However, these parts are still logically isolated to ensure the security of each organization’s data.

Software vendors typically use a public cloud environment provided by Microsoft Azure, Amazon AWS, or Google to host a software-as-a-subscription (SaaS) offering. It’s the vendors’ job, not the customers’, to maintain cloud-based infrastructure. This frees up the end customer from the responsibility and often liability of maintaining this piece of software and its required infrastructure. This model also offers virtually unlimited scalability, allowing customers to scale resources based on demand and pay only for what they use. This reduces capital expenditure and operational costs.

There are also other benefits to public cloud services. Public cloud services are accessible from anywhere with an internet connection, allowing for remote collaboration. They adhere to industry standards and implement robust security measures. By using public cloud, vendors can focus on creating and adding value instead of maintaining hardware, enhancing scalability of vendor-built solutions.

What, then, is cloud-native software? Cloud-native software is designed and optimized to run in public cloud environments, leveraging the full advantages of cloud computing models. Unlike traditional software, which might be merely hosted in the cloud, cloud-native applications are built to exploit the cloud’s scalability, flexibility, and resilience from the ground up.

It’s important to understand what type of “cloud” vendors are offering, since many will advertise “cloud” solutions while not being specific.

If the customer must manage the cloud environment, the vendor’s solution is NOT cloud-native. Vendors cannot deploy and maintain a cloud-native solution in a customer-managed environment at scale, so they will have their customers host the cloud infrastructure instance.

Understanding the build of the software is also important. To take advantage of the benefits that are inherent to a cloud-first or cloud-native approach, it’s imperative to ask if the build was done with the strategy of cloud-centric philosophy.

A cloud-centric philosophy also allows the design of the product or service offering to take advantage of additional resources from the cloud, rather than reliance of on-promise hardware needed to support functionality.

These are some factors to consider when considering what solutions are the right fit for your communications center. Both cloud solutions and cloud-native applications have benefits that are inherent to each type of build, but it’s important to understand the differences and ask vendors questions about their solution options to find the right fit for your situation.