Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) may be your best choice for a cloud service if you are an SMB, for a number of reasons. Companies that don’t mind hosting apps on third-party data centers can concentrate on developing, deploying, and monitoring their own solutions. But you’ll still need to decide on a cloud vendor, and whether to use public cloud, private cloud, or a hybrid cloud.
All cloud services are not equal
Private cloud
Private cloud definitely has its benefits when you switch to the cloud from a local server. When you use a private cloud, you do not share your space, so you are in control of every aspect and won’t be sharing resources with other organizations. This can bring a greater sense of security. Private cloud means that you can have total visibility into every activity in your ecosystem.
Using managed private cloud services, like Cloud One’s, means you’re the only one using this environment, but you also don’t have responsibility for provisioning, maintaining, and updating it.
Public cloud
Switching your SAP systems to public cloud can take hours, rather than days or weeks, because you’re moving to an environment that already exists. Compared with those for private cloud, the expense is minimal, since you aren’t bearing all the costs on your own, and you can easily scale up and down according to your changing needs, without having to provision a new environment or add a new server.
Best of all, you won’t be responsible for any of the hassle and headache of trouble-shooting and maintaining your cloud systems. Although you know that other organizations are using the same cloud, all your data is ring-fenced so no other cloud users can access it, and public cloud breaches are rare.
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Hybrid cloud
Finally, there’s a third option: hybrid cloud. As the name implies, this involves using a mixture of private and public cloud to support your SAP systems. Generally, businesses that use hybrid cloud keep their most sensitive information on private cloud, and use public cloud as a reservoir for surge computing needs. This way, you can enjoy the greater security and control of private cloud for your confidential data and highly regulated processes, and draw on the flexible pricing and scalability of public cloud to support additional compute tasks.
It might sound like hybrid cloud brings the benefits of both worlds and the disadvantages of neither, but there is a drawback. In order to be effective, hybrid cloud needs expert management that can integrate systems. To integrate public and private cloud successfully, you’ll need a strong and experienced provider that supports both types of cloud services.
Security and speed
Either choice you make, make sure you choose the best possible provider. Great cloud providers can afford advanced, cutting-edge security measures that ensure the safety of your data, but you might feel more comfortable with the total visibility of a private cloud.
Speed is every bit as important. You want a cloud that’s fast and responsive, because having to wait for processes to complete somewhat undermines the value of moving to the cloud.
When you use SAP Business One in the cloud with Cloud One, you can take your pick of private, public, or hybrid cloud. Cloud One has the expertise needed to integrate systems across private and public clouds, or to provide either private or multi-tenanted public cloud hosting for every vertical. With Cloud One and SAP Business One in the cloud, you can access all the benefits and functionalities of SAP systems without the hassle of maintenance and operations, and with far greater security.
