Typically when people think about the cloud and what it has to offer,
they picture a vast, amorphous thing in which everything is basically
the same, but that’s not the reality. Just as all cars aren’t created
equal – a BMW luxury sedan is not the same as a Ford Fiesta, for example – applications in the cloud are different in some important ways.
Cloud applications can be broken into two broad categories: 1) Consumer, or prosumer (for the “professional consumer”)
and 2) Enterprise. For the sake of this discussion we’ll focus on file
sharing and collaboration applications in these categories.
So what’s the difference, and does it really matter?
Consumer applications are typically low-cost, mass-market solutions,
usually available in both free and inexpensive premium versions. The
main goal of consumer solutions is to simplify tasks such as file and
photo sharing on a limited, low-volume basis.
Enterprise solutions are more robust, with strong emphasis on
privacy, security and reliability, and can be customized for specific
environments. They are designed for heavy-usage patterns, such as large
files and high volumes.
If you’re sharing or collaborating on non-sensitive, non-confidential
files with a small number of people — whether it’s an internal team or a
small number of external trading partners — and you’re looking for a
free or low-cost solution, then a consumer application may be the right
choice.
It’s safe to say that within the right circumstances, applications
like Google Docs, Dropbox and YouSendIt can be used to great effect by
small businesses.
However, if you need reliability, or if the information you’re
sharing is confidential, these consumer solutions may be a poor choice.
Consumer applications support some level of data encryption, but they do
not provide the right level of security for most enterprises. Nor do
they provide chain-of-custody information — that is, a receipt proving
that the recipient you sent the data to actually received it, when they received it, and that only they received it. This type of audit trail is required by regulations worldwide.
If your business handles confidential data such as patient health
information (PHI), which is subject to strict privacy regulations, you
require the capability to control and record who has access to the
information at all times. Consumer applications typically do not provide
this level of sophisticated security and control, mainly because it is
not required by the mass market of casual users they target. Similarly,
reliability and high availability are not requirements for most
consumer-grade applications in the cloud. For example, if you cannot
access and upload photos of your dog at a certain time, it isn’t a big
issue.
On the other hand, for enterprises and large organizations that have to guarantee file transfers and information exchange, it is
a big issue. Reliability and availability are not guaranteed with
consumer applications – in fact, if you look at the Dropbox or YouSendIt
terms of service, you’ll see that whether you pay for the service or
not, availability is simply not guaranteed.
Companies like Axway, which offers an MFT Service in the cloud as an
enterprise solution, promise 99.9% availability in their SLAs,
guaranteeing your information is available, accessible, and where it’s
supposed to be.
Regarding throughput and performance, again, consumer applications
are designed for less-critical, less-robust use. Business users may send
two or three files per week successfully, or share a document that’s
accessed four or five times per day using these services, but large
files are just not handled sufficiently.
Enterprise customers can share multi-gigabyte files, such as CAD/CAM
engineering schematics, via services like Axway’s MFT Service in the
cloud. These enterprise applications are designed to handle thousands of
file transfers per hour, and very large files as well. Axway also
provides best-in-class technology such as large enterprise clustering
(LEC) and file-transfer accelerators which are built into the cloud
technology to support enterprise-sized needs.
Not all applications in the cloud are created equal. In scenarios
where security, non-repudiation, availability and performance matter,
it’s time to look beyond the consumer applications to enterprise-grade
applications. Otherwise, you may end up with a service that looks good
on the surface, but in the end does not meet your needs and even causes
damage – such as data leaks or unmet SLAs with your customers. Go
straight to the applications and services that are going to provide the
capabilities and performance you need, and don’t settle for less.
(This post was first published at http:blogs.axway.com)
