Tag: cloud management solution

• Companies can save 20% of the total annual cost if they migrate to the cloud.
• Hyperscaler Cloud Services can enable businesses to experiment, build, innovate, and run any form of application.
• Hyperscaler adds immense value when creating custom software applications with a specified focus on the data center hardware and software needs.

Organizations of a variety of sizes are now able to reinvent how they operate and move more quickly and more agilely, thanks to the cloud. The move to the cloud has fundamentally changed how we perform our jobs, communicate, and interact. It is quickly becoming a requirement to be competitive in today’s digital environment. 

Custom software applications powered by the cloud are a force to be reckoned with, and the benefits become manifold with hyperscalers like AWS, Azure, and Google. What are these hyperscalers, and how can they supercharge your business? Let’s find out. 

What are Cloud Services?

In very simple terms, cloud computing is access to computer services such as servers, storage, databases, networking, software, analytics, intelligence, and more by means of the cloud (the Internet). With cloud computing, you can store and access data and programs on remote services hosted on the internet rather than the computer’s hard drive or local server. Cloud computing can be done with cloud services, which are essentially software programs that are hosted by third-party providers who make them available to users over the internet. 

Studies recently revealed that, on a worldwide scale, 94% of all companies will use some kind of cloud computing service in 2023 to help them run their business operations. This is a 14% jump from 2020. 

A major reason for this wide shift from on-premises servers of the companies to cloud providers is the ‘Pay as you go’ service offered by them, meaning that you only have to pay for the service that you are utilizing. However, the cloud offers more, much more!

How Does the Cloud Work and How Does it Benefit Businesses?

Just like any other IT solution, cloud services also rely on hardware and software. Users typically need just a computer, a stable internet connection, and operating systems to access cloud services. 

Benefits To Businesses:

• Cost Reduction: This is a major factor that makes this technology desirable. On average, 20% of the total annual cost can be saved by companies if they migrate to the cloud.
• More Storage: Many tools are available on the cloud with the sole purpose of providing more storage capacity. Some examples include Dropbox, OneDrive, Google Drive, and iCloud Drive.
• Higher Security Barricades: Another attractive feature of cloud services is their tight security regulations.  A report by Salesforce states that 94% of businesses claimed to have seen an improvement in security after adopting cloud services. 

Read more: Advance your business software development with Cloud Native. Download the complete 451 Research now and strategize a successful Cloud Native adoption process. 

Hyperscalers: What Are They, And How Do They Add Value To Cloud Services?

Hyperscaler got its name from the data processing method known as “hyperscale computing,” which allows software architecture to expand and scale on an enterprise level. Hyperscalers enable their clients to experiment, build, innovate, and run any form of application—from a social network to a smart city to online banking—while controlling costs and operating with agility by offering users access to a ready-made, scalable infrastructure. Some famous examples of hyperscalers are Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform (GCP). These technologies combined are reported to have an estimated 65% control over the cloud market.

Benefits Of Hyperscaler Cloud Services:

• Scalability: They can provide virtually unlimited computing resources, which enables organizations to scale their services and applications swiftly without worrying about hardware constraints.
• Global Availability: Users can easily access content with lower latency through hyperscalers, which boosts efficiency and user satisfaction. 
• Security: Hyperscaler clouds provide a high level of security by frequently investing in infrastructure reliability, disaster recovery, and cybersecurity.

Value Added By The Big Three: AWS, Azure, and Google

Let’s now talk about these three hyperscalers:

AWS: Four primary elements of value—cost savings, employee productivity, operational resilience, and business agility—are measured and tracked by AWS to assist enterprises in developing an in-depth case for the cloud. 

Azure: Azure is the only consistent hybrid cloud that delivers exceptional developer productivity, offers extensive, multi-layered security, including the most conformity coverage of any cloud provider, and costs less than AWS.

Google: Google’s solution provides a complete data foundation for unifying all workloads and overseeing the entire data life cycle. It can process data anywhere and is designed with and for AI, so you can obtain the most up-to-date tools for machine learning analysis, prompting, adjusting, training, and deploying unique foundation models—all while being connected to your business data.

How Can Custom Software Applications Benefit From These Hyperscalers?

Hyperscalers generally oversee the in-house technical skills of an IT team needed to customize data center hardware and software in accordance with the company’s business model and applications.  This adds immense value when creating custom software applications. 

AWS: 

AWS offers many tools you can use to build custom SaaS applications and third-party SaaS solutions. 

• Cognito: enables organizations to provide extra sign-in alternatives to their users. 
• AD Connector: adds an extra degree of security.
• Quicksight: is a BI solution that you can use to provide simple insights to the people who work with you.
• Cost Explorer: displays and analyzes your costs and operations.
• Aurora Serverless: takes care of routine database chores, including provisioning, patching, backup, recovery, failure detection, and repair. 

Azure: 

Azure services can assist you throughout the process of custom software application planning, development, delivery, and operations.

• Github: It is a programming solution for collaboration and version control that allows you and others to work on projects from anywhere in the world.
• Azure Pipelines: Works with any language or platform and is used to simultaneously deploy services to multiple targets.
• Azure Boards: This tool lets teams organize, monitor, and talk about their work across the whole development cycle.
• Azure Monitor: This helps improve the responsiveness and availability of your services and apps.
• Visual Studio: This can be used to connect applications and services to Azure and create services that operate in the Azure cloud.

Google: 

To help you create high-quality apps as quickly and dependably as possible, Google provides a wide range of resources. 

• Firebase: It is used for cloud communications, performance monitoring, and authentication validation.  
• Web: It offers information to assist you in enhancing your site’s organization, how it appears in Google searches, and the effectiveness of its user interface. 
• The Cloud: Here, you can access services like BigQuery (for processing large, ready-only data sets), Compute Engine, and Cloud Storage.
• Tensor Flow: This tool is mostly used for machine learning and gives developers access to a variety of workflows and high-level, logical APIs to build machine learning models in a variety of languages.

Why Should You Choose Fingent?

Fingent is one of the top providers of technology solutions around the globe right now, serving customers from four different continents. To assist you with your projects, we provide top client-centered personnel who can help you with any of the three types of Cloud services – SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS.

With our team of experts, you can scale up or down as you need and manage and integrate cloud environments according to your business needs. We provide excellent pre- and post-development support by monitoring performance and making any necessary adjustments, and we are accessible at any level of development.

Give us a call, and let’s talk about how to get your business to succeed on the cloud. 

Applications are at the front and center of business strategy today. Software-driven business transformation requires new apps that can be developed and delivered faster. Organizations need a new platform to support these changes – one that can deliver high-quality apps.
Globally, cloud platforms are redefining the way enterprises scale their businesses. Enterprises are under tremendous pressure to develop and deploy applications faster and more efficiently. Cloud-native applications help tech-savvy enterprises stay ahead of the competition.
Today, cloud-native application development has emerged as an innovative concept. It has altered the way software applications are developed, shipped, and managed. This article discusses in detail what cloud-native application development is. It will also explain how cloud-native application development is empowering app delivery.

What Is Cloud-Native Application Development?

A cloud-native application is designed for cloud computing architecture. These applications are built and hosted in the cloud. Cloud-native application development is an approach that exploits the flexibility, scalability, and resilience of cloud computing. It includes various tools and techniques used by software developers to build applications for the public cloud.
Cloud-native takes full advantage of the cloud computing model. Therefore, it efficiently combines architecture and technology that enable the design, development, and operation of workloads in the cloud. Cloud-native application development empowers you to gain a competitive advantage by quickly bringing ideas to market.
Cloud-native applications have shorter application lifecycles and are highly resilient, manageable, and observable. They speed up the development of new applications, optimize existing ones while connecting all of them.
Cloud-native application development is mostly based on microservices. Microservices are discrete and reusable components that can be used in any cloud environment. It is a multidimensional approach. It represents a cycle where complete focus is on the journey rather than the destination. Hence, it is all about building new applications and modernizing the existing ones on the principles of the cloud.
Read more: A Comprehensive Guide To Modern Cloud Application Development

What Is Cloud-Native Architecture and How It Empowers App Delivery?

Cloud-native follows five architectural features. These features are microservices, APIs (application programming interfaces, containers, backing services, modern design. These help businesses ship products faster, implement their customer’s needs, create value quicker, and aid collaboration between developers and IT specialists. Let’s consider each of them:

1. Microservices

It becomes easier to scale when a monolithic application is broken into many smaller pieces. These pieces are called microservices. Each of these microservices is designed to be autonomous, independent, and self-contained.
This approach is advantageous as each microservice can be deployed, upgraded, scaled, and restarted: without impacting the end-user. Microservices are independent and so you can eliminate dependencies and coordination efforts. The teams can work parallelly, thereby increasing velocity. Microservices enable elasticity-a key attribute of cloud computing.

2. Containers 

Containers are crucial for packaging and running cloud-native applications. Microservices are grouped into container images and deployed onto a host operating system as they are faster and lighter.
Containerization allows the bundling of a cloud-native application into a single unit. This unit may contain libraries, configuration files, or other components that the application needs. The containerization process makes it easy to test, move, and deploy the applications.
Because of its agile nature, you can start or stop a container at a moment’s notice and remove any defective instances. Container system guarantees consistency and increases application portability across cloud systems.

3. Backing services 

Cloud-native systems depend on ancillary resources. These resources include data stores, message brokers, monitoring, and identity services. These are called backing services. You could develop them in-house or simply select from a rich assortment of managed backing services offered by vendors. The latter is a better option as it can significantly save you time and labor.
As backing services can be bound dynamically to a microservice, it acts as an attached resource but decoupled from the application and remains interchangeable. In a nutshell, backing services can be attached to and detached from a microservice using a configuration management tool.

4. Application programming interfaces (APIs)

Microservices need an intrinsic mechanism to talk to each other. Plus, Client-facing microservices need to accept and respond to user requests. Application programming interfaces are those software connectors that can send and receive data, metadata, and service requests.
In cloud-native applications, RESTful APIs manage communication between microservices. Furthermore, APIs expose functionality that other software can use. It is a good practice to avoid touching the underlying code. As a best practice, APIs make it is easy to extend or customize applications without disturbing the underlying code.

5. Modern design

Despite having a wide variety of tools and techniques, one cannot avoid all challenges that arise in application development. So, IT teams must develop customized application monitoring and management methods. These methods must suit the organizations’ cloud model and IT infrastructure.
Watch: How InfinCE – A Digital Workplace Orchestration Platform, Can Help you Seamlessly Experience Infinite Cloud For Your Enterprise!

Why Is Cloud-Native Important Now?

Cloud-native is a cost-effective way that brings ideas to market quickly. Here are a few characteristics that make cloud-native critical for business growth:

• Auto-scalability: Cloud-native applications can scale services automatically and independently and do not require daily management.

• Elasticity: These applications and services can scale in-out and up-down as the demand changes ensuring efficient usage of resources.

• Speed of deployment: Businesses receive faster feedback and delivery when continuous delivery and deployment are used. It results in faster shipping of applications.

• Resilience: These services can survive outages and failures and remain online as disaster recovery mechanisms are available in the cloud.

• Cost-effective: As these applications are cloud-based, computing and storage resources can scale as needed. Thus, eliminating the need for overprovisioning. Businesses can use containers to maximize the number of microservices run on the host.  It saves time, resources, and money.

• Easy to manage: As cloud-native applications use automation, developers can track all microservices and components as they are updated. The team can focus on a specific microservice without worrying about how it will interact with the other services.

• Visibility: It is easy for the teams to study applications and learn how they function together, as a microservice architecture isolates services.

Read more: Cloud Migration Strategy: 7 Steps To Accomplish A Flawless Transitions

Key Takeaways

Cloud-native application development is here to stay. Businesses will continue to use cloud-native technologies for agility and efficiency benefits. Most importantly, it is a cost-effective way to architect new applications. Businesses must consider the tradeoff between cost, effort, and time involved in moving to a cloud-native architecture.
The transition towards a cloud-based digital-first organization can be hassle-free when you have the right partner to guide you through it. At Fingent, our developers have the experience and know-how to do it right for you.
Give us a call and let’s get talking!

Digital transformation was already happening across every industry, but the pandemic has accelerated the pace. Unfortunately, while many organizations have embraced the reality of rapid change, some of the companies have been slow to adopt new technologies.

Looking specifically at cloud solutions, companies that migrate some or all of their digital assets to the cloud can achieve transformational results. It is helping companies to innovate faster, modernize outdated infrastructure, get better insights from their data, scale globally, and restructure the existing business models to create better customer experiences.

Cloud migration allows easy access to data and applications from anywhere, making business functions smoother and simple to operate. This blog will help you understand why you need cloud migration now and the drivers that boost legacy cloud migration.

Why should you consider migration to the cloud?

Cloud migration can improve the performance and competitiveness of your organization. Often, system performance is poor, and maintenance costs are high. Any incompatibility with new technologies can cause problems when altering these systems as they cannot keep up to date at the same speed at which your business needs to innovate and scale. Additionally, lack of vendor support and regular updates for old systems can compromise the data security, making application migration to the cloud imperative.

Read more: Cloud Migration Strategy: 7 Steps to Accomplish a Flawless Transition

Common challenges associated with cloud migration

Cloud migration can be complex and risky, and many organizations face challenges during the transition.

1. Poor strategy and planning

Many organizations migrate to the cloud without proper planning or a good strategy. For a successful cloud implementation, organizations must plan well. As every application and dataset has different requirements, they will need a different approach to cloud migration. So, enterprises must have a valid business case for every workload it migrates to the cloud.

2. Vendor lock-in

This is a common problem faced by organizations that adopt cloud technology. While cloud providers offer many services, these services sometimes cannot be extended to other cloud platforms. Many organizations that start using cloud services often find it difficult to switch providers if the existing provider does not suit their requirements.

3. Data security and compliance

Data security and compliance are major obstacles to cloud migration. Cloud services often use a shared responsibility model in which they take the responsibility of securing the infrastructure while the organization takes responsibility for security data and workloads. It means you are responsible for configuring the security measures correctly and ensuring that all services and applications have proper security controls.

4. Cost Management

Many companies don’t have clear KPIs to understand what they plan to spend or save after migration, making it difficult to know if the migration was successful from the cost point of view. Additionally, as the cloud environment is dynamic, the costs can change as new services are adopted, and application usage grows.

Read more: A Comprehensive Guide To Modern Cloud Application Development

What are the drivers that encourage cloud migration?

1. Hassle-free digital transformation

With recent advances in cloud computing, leaders can digitize their core functionalities such as SAP, CRM, data analytics, and more. From innovating to improving productivity to unlocking new sources of revenue, the cloud provides endless opportunities to enterprises that migrate away from legacy systems.

2. Accelerate growth

Whether it is organic expansion, mergers, or acquisitions, technology is accelerating organizational growth. Organizations leveraging the cloud can integrate new acquisitions seamlessly with the existing platforms and also scale rapidly using auto-scaling functionality and flexible data management services.

3. Better Security

Data security is turning significant. By migrating to the cloud, enterprises can update their IT infrastructure according to the latest practices and protect their applications from malicious hacking attempts.

While many leaders mistakenly think that the cloud itself makes an organization secure, in reality, it empowers groups to implement governance, strict security policies, and compliance guardrails needed for their operations.

4. Improve business agility

To stay ahead of your competitors, you must be agile. It means you need to have access to flexible and on-demand IT resources. With the cloud, over 99% of resources are available on-demand. Also, enterprises don’t have to wait endlessly for any hardware component and installation. They can lease valuable capabilities from their cloud providers and get to the market faster.

5. Reduce costs

Yet another reason for businesses to migrate to the cloud is to reduce IT costs. You can easily find the right-size resources in the cloud according to your business needs and cut unnecessary costs. Also, companies can adjust capacity needs whenever the need arises and eliminate unnecessary hardware.

6. Merge data centers

With cloud computing, companies do not have to manage their own on-premises data centers. Instead, they can outsource back-end responsibilities to their cloud providers and use their resources for higher-value activities. Additionally, companies can consolidate their operations and distribute cloud services whenever needed, improving efficiency.

7. Leverage modern technologies

Migrating to the cloud allows businesses to leverage new technologies. For example, companies can take advantage of AI and machine learning which are not feasible on-premises. They can also take advantage of complex cloud-native technologies such as Kubernetes containers and data lakes easily.

Read more: 6 Reasons Why The FinTech Industry Should Embrace Legacy Cloud Migration

Conclusion

To avail of the migration benefits, you must successfully move your on-premises IT infrastructure to the cloud. As a cloud expert, we help understand the challenges and help you make a smooth transition without disrupting your current operations.

At Fingent, we offer a single control plane for the performance and security products to ensure seamless legacy cloud migration. In addition, we enable easy integration with public, private, or hybrid cloud. So connect with our experts today, and know, how we can help you take your business to new heights with seamless cloud migrations.

How does legacy cloud migration ensure business continuity in FinTech? Explore in this article. 

Did everyone have Business Continuity Plans in place and protocols to follow during the pandemic? Yes, definitely. Did anyone expect a disaster of magnitude like this? Not in their wildest dreams or gloomiest forecasts! The pandemic forced hundreds of millions of employees to shelter in place, essentially moving all operations online. Not all organizations were equipped with the needed technological tools, and most businesses were caught off-guard. FinTech companies were not immune to the aftermath. 

For example, pre-COVID-19, it is true that a few FinTech organizations began migrating to Cloud. But, conversely, there were many who hesitated to embrace the cloud migration strategy because of legitimate concerns over critical factors such as rising costs, managing complex business data and workloads, re-training existing IT staff, and more. 

The pandemic was a wake-up call that helped businesses identify legacy cloud migration as a relevant and vital choice. Though most companies have realized that modernizing old, outdated business applications can boost productivity and increase efficiency; some are still hesitant about their cloud migration strategy.

Read more: 11 Practices Followed by Leaders to Build Resilience and Ensure Rapid Business Recovery

This blog explains why FinTech organizations must consider legacy cloud migration seriously and what are some specific benefits of cloud migration strategy.

What is legacy cloud migration?

Legacy cloud migration involves moving on-premise applications, outdated software, or programs that a company has relied upon for years. These applications may include everything from sales or CRM applications to industry-specific applications. Some FinTech organizations may be reluctant to migrate to cloud just because legacy cloud migration is a daunting project. However, maintaining a status quo can be detrimental to your business growth. 

Read more: Why modernize your legacy systems? What’s the best approach to legacy systems modernization?

Legacy cloud migration is the only light at the end of the tunnel 

The pandemic has triggered a significant reexamination of FinTech businesses and their IT priorities. Gartner predicts that “by 2022 cloud shift across key enterprises IT markets will increase to 28%.” This era of economic uncertainty caused by the pandemic affected all businesses, especially, FinTech organizations. A report from Yellowbrick showed that 84.3% say cloud computing is more important than workplace disruption.

Thankfully, cloud migration strategy was available when it was most needed – a phase when maintaining business continuity has become a priority. Consider the most important reasons for legacy cloud migration.

Why FinTech Companies Should Embrace Legacy Cloud Migration

1. People matter more than premises

As the pandemic hit the world with one wave after another with no time to catch a breath, there was a dire need for remote self-service technology. The massive role played by people working from home is a clear indication that people matter more than premises. A year ago, cloud migration strategy was considered discretionary. Today, work from home has made cloud migration mandatory.

Read more: Why It’s Time to Embrace Cloud and Mobility Trends To Recession-Proof Your Business?

Hence, now is the time for FinTech organizations to plan for their business continuity to remain adept for future upheavals, disruptions, or even disasters. When your organization migrates to cloud, you ensure your teams’ effectiveness while working remotely.

2. Prepare for the next 

Though the pandemic is wreaking havoc, it will recede in due time. However, what remains is a possibility of a similar recurrence of disruption in the future. Hence, FinTech organizations must prepare for future disruption by recognizing that the calamity to come may not be another pandemic but its functional equivalent. Legacy cloud migration will equip you to face any future disruptions and remain resilient. 

3. Facilitate real-time payments

Banks are well aware of the advantages of real-time payments. The race is on for upgrades and integrations that allow organizations to leverage real-time payments. A survey of over 500 executives indicated that 71.9% are ‘extremely interested’ in such payment capabilities. Above all, cloud brings in scalability and agility to real-time payments. Cloud migration strategy can improve the speed and consistency of transactions. Besides, it can enable fast and frictionless transactions.

Legacy cloud migration allows banks to adopt digital payments. Banks can address many of their traditional payment pain points, such as spikes in demand. 

Collaborating between payment players and cloud service providers can help your organization provide a more secure digital experience for your customers. This is of paramount importance in a world where contactless interaction is the key. According to a McKinsey survey, banks that adopt digital transformation were able to increase customer satisfaction by 15-20%, reduce cost by 20-40%, and boost conversion rates and growth by 20%.

While consumer expectations and payment preferences continue to evolve rapidly, cloud migration strategy will help FinTech industries to stay relevant and continue to grow.

Read more: Safeguarding IT Infrastructure From Cyber Attacks – Best Practices

4. Scalability and flexibility for an uncertain future

FinTech firms need an infrastructure that can grow with them and protect their business from future disruptions. Migrating to a cloud platform equips FinTech firms to adapt to branch closures while extending banking services to as many people as possible. Legacy cloud migration provides the agility to scale with speed while saving on on-premise infrastructure that is comparatively expensive to maintain and upgrade. Moreover, it can provide your organization the needed accessibility, flexibility, and scalability during economic downturns. 

5. Manage risks and compliance

Efficiency, automation, and cloud-based delivery will be critical for compliance operations. It is vital to use next-generation technology and emerging digital approaches to optimize risk modeling. Since legacy cloud migration is agile, flexible, and low cost, it can solve many challenges in operational risk and financial crime compliance activities. Additionally, solutions deployed in the cloud can assist with operational challenges. 

6. Data management 

Acquiring large quantities of accurate data is a top priority for all FinTech firms. Their success depends on all the information they must collect, from onboarding to analyzing their spending habits. Cloud migration strategy enables your firm to gather and store data securely while allowing your designated employees to access it from anywhere when required.

Read more: Cloud Migration Strategy: 7 Steps to Accomplish a Flawless Transition

The FinTech industry is at a crossroads now. How it responds to the current crisis will determine its future. The key to the survival of FinTech companies will be the rapid digitization of their business and the adoption of cloud migration strategy. Migrating to the cloud is as important as the historic move from typewriter to computer. Cloud migration has become a global force for business growth. It can reduce overhead costs and help your team focus on increasing productivity and performance.

Cloud migration strategy will become inevitable as the FinTech industry builds a more accessible financial world. By partnering with a cloud migration services provider like Fingent, you will be able to quickly and seamlessly migrate to the cloud without disrupting your business. We also help you build FinTech applications and platforms leveraging the latest technology in the market. So, give us a call, and let’s get talking. 

In Conversation with Stephen Cummings, SVP, InfinCE

InfinCE represents the next phase of cloud for enterprises. Being a progressive approach to running IT, InfinCE democratized the cloud enabling businesses of all kind to leverage its possibilities. Unveiled at the 2018 Small Business Expo, InfinCE marks a shift in “untangling technology”, which simplified how businesses utilize the cloud for refining their processes and operations. InfinCE delivers a secure cloud model that encompass all the essential IT requirements of enterprises.

As a radically different enterprise cloud system, InfinCE really invoked my curiosity to know more about its simplified cloud model. Stephen Cummings, the Senior Vice President of Business Development at Fingent Corporation was earnest enough to spare a little time from his busy schedule and give me a firm background about InfinCE in accordance with the questions that I presented. He elaborated on the features and functionalities of InfinCE, which got me well informed of the capabilities of this platform.

Thank you, Stephen, for your time. Let us begin this short interview with a brief description of what InfinCE is about.

So, can you tell us a bit about InfinCE and who is it aimed at?

Up until now, cloud technology has been structured for use by, and marketed to, a technical audience of developers and IT professionals in large corporations. We developed InfinCE to both simplify how businesses get the software and related support and to dramatically lower their IT-related costs. By building upon the latest developments in cloud-based systems, and incorporating available open source software, we have been able to pull together the things a small business needs to have a secure, modern IT infrastructure  – from a company website and mail server to full-featured enterprise software and desktop tools.

InfinCE is the new way for small businesses to run IT.

Business owners don’t have time to learn about digital tools or to manage them, and they don’t have money to waste. We give them high-value technology options that are intuitive and affordable. Our concierge support services are at hand whenever there is a technical question or concern.

What led you to develop a cloud platform like InfinCE?

Survey after survey showed that a large percentage of small businesses were not taking advantage of technology that would help them significantly improve their ability to serve their customers. In today’s internet-focused world, their lack of technology puts them at a serious disadvantage to their more nimble competitors. Many companies were discouraged from using existing open-source software, which, though free of cost, did require technical knowledge to get set up.

At the same time, we knew that new developments in cloud and communications technology were making it possible to deliver solutions for them in a completely new way. For open source specifically, we knew if we could automate the setup process, a further barrier to its use would be eliminated. What we were able to do is to make software set up a “one-click” process and to do the same for support services.

Business owners can not only get up and running easily and quickly, but they can do so without anxiety because they can easily use a “life-line” to have someone knowledgeable lend a hand.

Yes, technical complexity and jargon are preventing businesses from adopting the technology. In view of that, can you elaborate on the challenges that you came across while developing this platform?

To make a system both powerfully featured and easy to use meant we had to meet a number of design challenges. How could we make the setup fast and automatic, even for business owners who may not be very technical themselves? How can we make it easy -whether a business owner is technologically intrepid or not – to leverage the options that make sense for their business?

How can we make application software developed by many independent developers work well together? How can we accommodate a flexible and economical infrastructure that works for simple or complex applications, and for small or large companies?

How can we make the user have a friendly experience, for example with a “single-sign-on” capability across all applications? How can we give users an even more secure system than is typical?

With data privacy and security featured again in the news, how much protection does a business cloud platform like InfinCE offer to businesses?

We have given a lot of focus on data security as it allows people to build trust within the application and its information – which is one of the most important factors. Every customer’s data is hosted on a separate secure virtual server. Our secure servers and SSL built for applications ensure that there is no information that is being tracked or eavesdropped by any external entities.

How much relevance does cloud computing have in today’s business environment? And where does InfinCE fit in this environment?

In today’s business environment, a business owner needs to have access to her data right when she needs it, irrespective of her location or geography and the device she is accessing it from.  This is what cloud computing provides – an access to one’s business data at any time and anywhere you have an internet connection. Apart from this obvious benefit, cloud computing also improves scalability, business continuity, collaboration efficiency and reduces cost. So yes, cloud computing is going to be here for the foreseeable future.

Cloud computing is an umbrella term for different types of cloud services, that include SaaS, PaaS & IaaS. InfinCE can be considered as an IaaS service as we provide the servers, storage, and networking hardware, as well as the virtualization layer.  On top of that, we also leverage SaaS to offer a plethora of tools and applications that will cover all the technology needs of an SMB. InfinCE is thus a unique combination of IaaS and SaaS to cater to all the IT needs of a small business.

Read more: Top Trends That Will Transform Cloud Computing in 2020 and Beyond!

Will InfinCE’s concept of cloud management for businesses lead to a better form of managing and optimizing business processes?

InfinCE is an IT solution for SMBs. A small or medium business owner needs technological solutions for a variety of business needs, but may not have an IT budget that is large enough to afford the top of the line enterprise software solutions.  On the other hand, we have a lot of feature-rich Open Source software that are competitive alternatives to Enterprise Software.

The challenge here is that installing, customizing and setting up an Open Source software requires technology experts in the team. Off the shelf SaaS products will need the employees to access various products through multiple channels with multiple logins, with no single source for all of the business data.

InfinCE is a solution to this problem. We are constantly integrating good quality Open Source and third-party tools into our App Marketplace. With a few clicks, an InfinCE customer can add the desired App to his InfinCE Workplace.

The new software will automatically be integrated through Single Sign-On, becoming part of their IT system. This ease of plugging in business apps on demand makes InfinCE a powerful IT solution for SMBs.

What are the potential benefits that small and medium businesses can derive from using InfinCE?

In terms of setting up Small & Medium businesses, the ability to collaborate with their internal team and carrying out business activities has substantially improved and can be managed accurately using InfinCE — which no platform provides. Going further, different departments within a company can be micromanaged and this increases transparency by also allowing user restrictions across InfinCE.

Security is another key area that benefits our customers, as nowadays the emails, files that we share travel through various servers before reaching us, and there can be eavesdropping and privacy can be at stake. We provide servers that are managed by us to send emails and fresh dedicated email servers can also be bought at a very less cost.

How do you envision the future of InfinCE and what new improvements and upgrades will be implemented in this solution in the coming times?

InfinCE stands for “InfinCE Cloud for Enterprise” and that’s the vision driving us. By continuously integrating more and more applications in our App Marketplace and innovating our cloud solution, we aim to arm SMBs with the latest technology and tools. The business owners can concentrate on growing the business while we take care of their IT.  Our work never stops!

Compared to other enterprise cloud platforms, what specific features have you included in InfinCE to make it a popular dependable platform?

Compared to other enterprise cloud platforms, we are providing one-of-a-kind platform wherein business can access numerous Open Source applications, with a Single-Sign-On option to effectively run their businesses. Apart from that, all the servers, hosting and basic support for Open Source applications are offered by us and an extremely affordable cost and is secured. Our features, costing, and level of services have been brutally transparent and there have not been any hidden costs involved which sets us apart from our potential competitors.

Does the extended storage options given at InfinCE come in specific tiers?

We prescribe a minimum of 2GB storage per user.  Additional storage can be bought from a minimum of 10GB upwards. The real benefit for InfinCE customers is that they are in control of how the storage is allocated across the users. The business owner is free to do a differential allocation of the extended storage across users, as per individual requirements.

That indeed provided me with some in-depth information about InfinCE. In a way, the open accessible cloud model that you envision clearly does have much larger potential in the coming years. Deep down, I do believe in the same thing, which is that all businesses should be given the means to utilize technology to their advantage.

By creating a platform like InfinCE, Fingent Corp has indeed opened the doors of the cloud to businesses of all kind, so that they could remain technologically competitive and productive. Thank you, Stephen, for granting this interview and wishing the very best for all your ventures.

To learn how your enterprise can benefit from custom-built business applications, get in touch with our experts today!

2020 Turning The Year Of Multi-Cloud Adoption for Enterprises

There has been a lot of hype going on around businesses adopting multi-cloud strategies that make use of public, private, and hybrid cloud services. Businesses, especially the mid-market and enterprise-level industries can utilize multi-cloud strategy as a smart investment by leveraging the benefits of its resilient performance and virtual infrastructure.

A multi-cloud strategy is all about adopting a mixture of IAAS (Infrastructure As A Service) services from multiple cloud providers and sharing workloads among each of these services which are reliable, secure, flexible, and of course cost-effective. 

Why Must Businesses Opt For A Multi-Cloud Strategy?

Businesses can adopt a multi-cloud strategy to acquire an optimal distribution of assets across the user’s cloud-hosting environments. With a multi-cloud strategy, businesses can have access to multiple options such as favorable Service Level Agreement terms and conditions, greater upload speed selection, customizable capacity, cost terms, and many more.

How Can Businesses Make A Multi-Cloud Adoption Decision?

Multi-cloud adoption decisions are based on 3 major considerations:

• Sourcing – Agility can be improved and chances of vendor lock-in can be avoided or minimized by sourcing. This decision can be driven by factors such as performance, data sovereignty, availability, regulatory requirements, and so on.
• Architecture – Architecture is a major decision-driver as many modern applications are mostly of modular fashion that can span multiple cloud providers and obtain services from any number of clouds.
• Governance – Businesses can now standardize policies, procedures, processes, and even share tools that can enable cost governance. By adopting services from multiple cloud providers, enterprises can now ensure operational control, unify administrative processes, and monitor their IT systems more effectively and efficiently.

Better disaster recovery and easier migration are the other key benefits that drive enterprises to adopt multi-cloud strategies.

Related Reading: Cloud Computing Trends To Expect In 2020

Top 7 Reasons To Adopt Multi-Cloud For Your Business

• Ability To Find The Best-In-Class Multi-Cloud Providers

Businesses administrators can bring in the best-in-class cloud hosting providers for each task that best suits their requirements. In a recent survey by Gartner, 81% of respondents said that the multi-cloud approach proved beneficial to them. Businesses are free to make their decisions based on the sourcing, architecture, and governance factors as mentioned above.

• Agility

According to a recent study by RightScale, organizations leverage almost 5 different cloud platforms on average. This figure shows the transformation of enterprises increasingly towards multi-cloud environments. Businesses struggling with legacy IT systems, hardware suppliers, and on-premise structures can benefit from adopting multi-cloud infrastructures to improve agility as well as workload mobility amongst heterogeneous cloud platforms.

• Flexibility And Scalability

With a competent multi-cloud adoption, enterprises can now scale their storage up or down based on their requirements. A multi-cloud environment is a perfect place for the storage of data with proper automation as well as real-time syncing. Based on the requirements of individual data segments, businesses can depend on multiple cloud vendors specifically. For improved scalability, enterprises must focus on achieving the following 4 key factors:

1. A single view of each cloud asset
2. Portable application design
3. The capability to automate and orchestrate across multiple clouds
4. Improved workload placement

•  Network Performance Improvement

With a multi-cloud interconnection, enterprises can now create high-speed, low-latency infrastructures. This helps to reduce the costs associated with integrating clouds with the existing IT system. When businesses extend their networks to multiple providers in this manner, proximity is ensured and low-latency connections are established that in turn improves the application’s response time along with providing the user a better experience. 

• Improved Risk Management

Risk management is a great advantage that multi-cloud strategies can provide businesses with. For instance, consider the case where a vendor has an infrastructure meltdown or an attack. A multi-cloud user can mitigate the risk by switching to another service provider or back up or to a private cloud, immediately. Adopting redundant, independent systems that provide robust authentication features, vulnerability testing as well as API assets consolidation ensure proper risk management. 

• Prevention Of Vendor Lock-In

With a multi-cloud strategy, enterprises can evaluate the benefits, terms, and pitfalls of multiple service providers and can choose the option to switch to another vendor after negotiation and careful validation. Analyzing terms and conditions before signing a partnership with a vendor can prevent vendor lock-in situations.

• Competitive Pricing

Enterprises can choose between the vendors and select the best-suited based on their offerings such as adjustable contracts, flexible payment schemes, the capacity to customize, and many other features.

To learn more about adopting an effective multi-cloud strategy and the benefits it offers, drop us a call and talk to an expert. 

Why Businesses With Matured Cloud Footprints Should Move To The Hyper Hybrid Cloud?

The Cloud is no longer an option. It is the revolution that has become inevitable for businesses and more and more businesses are recognizing this and moving their data into the cloud. They are implementing mature cloud strategies that call for comprehensive cloud management solutions. They need a solution, which can handle the scale and complexity involved in advanced integration and orchestration. The hyper-hybrid cloud becomes extremely important here and is paving new operational avenues for all businesses. 

This blog explains the reasons why and how your business can benefit from moving on to the hyper-hybrid cloud.

Understanding What Hyper-Hybrid Cloud Is

The hyper-hybrid cloud is the best of two cloud services, private and public. Let’s break it up to get the complete sense of the term. 

In business terms, the word ‘hyper’ means greater, or more than usual, and ‘hybrid’ means mixed. As the name suggests, hyper-hybrid makes use of both on-premises private cloud, as well as third party public cloud resources but with increased diversity, and complexity. 

The hyper-hybrid cloud forms an inter-routed plumbing system, as it were, between private and public clouds with greater flexibility according to the businesses demand, needs, and cost changes. It also provides virtualization and virtualization software management so that businesses can easily visualize hardware assets and move them to a private or public cloud as the need may be. This is the reason why many industries are moving towards the hyper-hybrid cloud instead of getting locked in with only a private or public provider.

Related Reading: Core Challenges While Enterprises Move to Hybrid Cloud and DevOps

Should Your Business Move to the Hyper-hybrid Cloud?

With the massive array of options available at hand, businesses are adopting a “multi-cloud” strategy as opposed to the cloud strategy. This means that they are adopting a hybrid cloud with at least one public cloud and one private cloud. What they need is a system with multiple applications and infrastructure services on both the cloud platforms with flexibility and maneuverability. That is what ‘the hyper-hybrid cloud’ is.

Although some businesses are successful with public cloud providers, a few others have found it necessary to keep some resources private due to cost, performance, and compliance considerations. Consider these questions to check if your business is suitable for a hyper-hybrid cloud model:

• Is your business serving a number of verticals, each with a different IT security and performance requirement?
• Do you want to optimize cloud investment without compromising the value proposition of private or public cloud technologies?
• Do you want to improve security on existing cloud solutions?
• Do you want a cloud solution where you can conveniently switch between public and private clouds depending on your needs and what the market offers?

If your answer is yes, then moving on to the hyper-hybrid cloud is your best option.

Related Reading: How Secure is Your Business in a Multi-Cloud Environment

Five Incredible Benefits of the Hyper-hybrid Cloud

• Flexibility: Varying IT demands can be managed with greater flexibility. The distribution of workloads across private and public infrastructure based on performance, cost and security can be easily handled in line with your business policies. 

• Increased automation and consistency: As your business grows, you cannot afford to spend too much time on your resource utilization projects which must remain accurate, nonetheless. The hyper-hybrid cloud helps your business automate processes by implementing rules which allow you to access the resources according to your business requirements. This way, it ensures that the process is consistent even if it must be repeated over multiple environments. 

• Scalability: When it comes to managing intensive workloads, the hyper-hybrid cloud is highly scalable. It can scale down to utilize the private cloud or scale up to utilize the public cloud according to the need of the hour.

• Enhanced security: Since the hyper-hybrid cloud integrates the public cloud model with on-premises cloud hardware, it provides your business total control over systems, security, and policies. Similar to a private cloud model, the hyper-hybrid operates behind a firewall. The security of sensitive information is guaranteed as it operates from a private cloud. At the same time, this allows your business to manage the day to day enterprise operations on a public cloud that can easily be scaled according to your needs. 

• Well balanced: The hyper-hybrid cloud structure makes it easy to divide the workload between both the cloud computing models and provide the maximum capacity to accommodate the demands of your business. It enables your business to stay competitive with the aid of such a versatile platform. 

Related Reading: Hybrid Cloud Infrastructure: How It Benefits Your Business

Experiencing Success With Hyper-hybrid Cloud

The hyper-hybrid cloud plays a crucial role in helping your business respond to the changing market needs and demands. It is both beneficial and critical for a business that wants to enhance productivity and security, and improve scalability and consistency. Fingent can help you successfully meet the challenges of implementing a hyper-hybrid cloud solution. Talk to us to understand how we can solve your dilemmas related to cloud platforms. 

How To Leverage A Hybrid Cloud Infrastructure For A Positive Business Outcome

The modern IT world has Hybrid IT transformations happening every single day. Different enterprises have infrastructure and applications from different vendors. These applications when crossing through clouds are weighed down significantly by enormous amounts of data. The proprietary tools gathered from various vendors do not communicate with each other either. Here comes the need for integrating advanced infrastructure and management to bring the clouds together. This is called Hybrid Cloud management (HCM).

Why Consider A Hybrid Cloud Infrastructure For Your Enterprise?

Most organizations are skeptical of going public or private cloud especially when it comes to dealing with sensitive data. 

A private cloud, also known as an enterprise cloud, is a model of cloud computing where IT services are rendered over a private IT infrastructure. This is dedicated to the use of a single organization and is managed through internal resources. On the other hand, a public cloud is a computing service model that renders storage and computational services via the Internet to the public users. Public cloud is what is referred to as ‘Cloud Computing’ generally. 

Features Of A Good Cloud Management Solution

A good cloud management system should facilitate as a bridge between the private and public cloud infrastructures. The role of a great HCM (Hybrid Cloud Management) platform is unifying and streamlining the cross-cloud activities of the Hybrid IT infrastructure, applications, and all of its associated services. 

The existing Hybrid Cloud Management tools are classified into 3 major categories such as the following:

• Cloud and Service Fabric – For provisioning, deploying, and managing public/ private cloud resources.
• Service Management – For optimization of cloud services.
• Application/ Infrastructure Management – For provisioning, deploying, and managing of various business applications as well as cloud services. 

The following are the key benefits leveraged from an effective Hybrid cloud management platform:

• Improved Analytics – Obtaining an insight into the minutest of details is essential in every multi-cloud environment. All operational concerns, gathering information on underutilized assets, making effective resource distribution, etc are made possible via a proper hybrid cloud management platform.
• Optimized Cost Management – The spending limits for various projects can be added via a great hybrid cloud management platform. It provides visibility into budgeting and controlling of various cloud resources, at a granular level. 
• Increased Efficiency – Hybrid cloud management platforms enable access to cloud resources for developers and users. This on-demand self-service access empowers users to be efficient and productive. For instance, activities such as resizing of assets, and reclaiming are made automated through a hybrid cloud management platform.

This is where a Hybrid solution is required. Hybrid cloud management is a process as well as a platform via which a hybrid cloud is managed. 

Cloud Management Platform: Why Is It Critical In Making A Hybrid Infrastructure

Amidst the pressing confusion of enterprises to choose between a private and public cloud infrastructure, the current environment involves the majority of businesses choosing a hybrid approach. 

A multitude of vendors sells cloud-based services based on customized requirements. In this scenario, the challenge with a hybrid cloud management platform is that they are puzzled about the deployment of a cohesive cloud management platform. This should provide a bridge amidst the public and private cloud infrastructures. 

Managing The Intersection Between Private And Public Clouds

In a private cloud, data resides in a hosted data center or the intranet of a firm. Here, all the data is protected behind a firewall. Businesses who can use their current infrastructure can benefit out of the private cloud strategy as they already have expensive data centers. However, since the entire management and maintenance of these data centers is taken care of by the enterprises, replacement of the servers can be a very costly affair. Private clouds, but, offer an increased level of security. 

The public cloud environment, on the other hand, stores data on the provider’s data center. The public cloud environment considerably reduces lead times in testing and in deploying services. 

The management of the intersection between the public and private clouds is thus necessary for the following key reasons:

1. Relying On Multiple Cloud Vendors: Handling Management Complexity

Different vendors provide unique platforms and services with a different set of rules. Relying on multiple cloud vendors can thus make management a daunting process. For instance, access management becomes a complex process when there are different services deployed by multiple vendors. It is hence important to partner with a single managed service provider to create a hybrid cloud management platform by taking various critical factors like the above mentioned into account. 

2. Concerns Of Security Threats And Breaches

An enterprise or an internal cloud environment stores its data in a single place. Unlike this approach of a private or an on-premise cloud, a hybrid cloud environment does not require to reside in a single place. This can lead to security or compliance breaches. 

Businesses must learn where their data is hosted physically to avoid potential threats. This can be accomplished by an effective hybrid cloud management platform where the insights are provided across multiple cloud landing regions.

3. Cloud Computing And The Dangers Of Shadow IT

Shadow IT arises from two main cloud solution features, namely external hosting of solutions and the pay-as-you-go feature. IT-related risks such as those associated with data security, disaster recovery, data privacy, and system reliability, etc rise from the former. The latter gives rise to risks associated with the financial aspects of cloud deployment. This by-passing of the in-house IT as a whole leads to security and compliance issues. 

An effective hybrid cloud management strategy is thus the solution for preventing such risks and managing the platform proactively. 

Future Of Hybrid Cloud Management

By the year 2020, Gartner forecasts that 90% of enterprises will adopt the hybrid cloud infrastructure. Incorporation of machine learning, artificial intelligence, and automation into hybrid cloud platforms will continue to create technological breakthroughs. 

Vendor collaboration is seen as the next big strong feature of hybrid cloud management. 

With the support of the right partner, your business can optimize your cloud investment strategy to reap desired outcomes. Call our experts right away to learn more about how you can make the best out of your hybrid infrastructure with a cloud management platform!