How Do You Know Which Cloud Type is Best for You?

Public? Private? Gated? Hybrid? Multiple? Or simply no cloud at all? For anyone who thought “cloud” was a binary, on-off option, this list of possibilities shows there’s more to it. And the complications don’t stop there, either. Once you’ve gathered the information to see which kind of cloud option does what, you’ll need to compare with your own enterprise needs (which may leave you with several choices, or possibly none at all).

Let’s start with one aspect that is dear to many people’s hearts. Money. Now, that’s not just dollars and cents, but also time, effort, opportunity cost, and anything else that, one way or another, you might end up paying for. The cloud – in general – has good press about helping enterprises and organizations to make savings in infrastructure and staffing costs. There is a good deal of truth in this. For example, LoadSpring’s hosted application services are affordable, because we leverage our high-performance infrastructure and excellent professional know-how for the benefit of many customers. You get the advantages, but at a fraction of the cost of an equivalent in-house system.

A Red-Yellow-Green Model to Decide about Clouds

However, businesses must consider more than just the financial aspects. Information security is now vitally important for many organizations. The “red, yellow, green” classification can be used by enterprises to specify not only who can access different types of data, but also any geographical restrictions on its storage. This can help you narrow down your choice of suitable cloud types.

• Green. This is for standard data. It is protected by standard security protocols. At the same time, the enterprise allows both its own employees and non-employees to access the data. Some public cloud services offer this level of security and a hybrid cloud arrangement (public/private) may also be satisfactory. LoadSpring™ recommends that green data (and of course yellow and red data) is encrypted not just in transit, but also when at rest, using a minimum of 128-bit encryption technology when supported by the underlying application.
• Yellow. This data requires confidential protection so that access can be restricted to authorized employees of the enterprise. The data may reside inside or outside the United States. Some public cloud services may not have the required security for this. Other cloud services offering gated access may be satisfactory. LoadSpring’s security standards treat both green and yellow data as yellow data, due to our integrated strict authentication standards as minimum for all data.
• Red. This classification concerns data that is subject to federal project guidelines for the customer or that has a sensitivity level requiring restriction of access to only US-based citizens and restriction of storage to only US-based facilities. As you might imagine, significantly fewer cloud providers are able to guarantee these restrictions. Enterprises with red data can come to LoadSpring because we have location awareness capabilities integrated into our secure LoadSpring Cloud Platform™. This allows our client’s management team to see geographically where software is being accessed and who is accessing it.

Figuring Out What’s Right for Your Organization

In summary, LoadSpring’s cloud Project Management solutions offer gated access (i.e. with full security and only after you and we have made business acquaintance) to meet or exceed each level of security required. We have even integrated custom-developed additional security layers into the infrastructure of our data centers to manage cage construction, who has access to the premises for customers to control, and providing advanced restrictions on the geographical locations of employees of an enterprise accessing their company’s data. Another LoadSpring advantage includes smart software licensing management and tracking to benefit you as a customer.

This article won’t tell you which type of cloud is best for you. That’s a decision to be made according to your own specific needs. However, the choice is perhaps easier than you thought. Please feel free to give us a call. We’d be happy to help you pin down the cloud type that makes most sense for your organization, whatever type that may be.