What Are Cloud Solutions?
Cloud solutions refer to compute, storage, and networking resources that are abstracted from the underlying hardware into shared pools of virtualized resources. These resources can be spun up on demand as virtual machines or containers to support workloads, applications, databases, or other processes. Cloud solutions may also encompass any cloud services or cloud technology that organizations use to amplify the value they get from the cloud.
By taking advantage of cloud solutions, businesses gain access to scalable infrastructure with minimal up-front investment. A click or two of a mouse can increase capacity, integrate a new service, or deploy a new product.
Key Cloud Architecture Strategies
There is no one right way to access cloud solutions. Cloud deployment models generally break down into three different approaches:
- Public cloud: The public cloud refers to any computing infrastructure, IT resources, and software solutions you access from a cloud service provider (CSP) such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, or Google Cloud.
- Multicloud: A multicloud deployment refers to combining cloud services from different vendors and CSPs to achieve the ideal mix of cost and performance for your use case. This deployment also requires a high degree of data portability and system interoperability to allow data to flow seamlessly from cloud to cloud.
- Hybrid cloud: A hybrid cloud approach provides computing resources from both private cloud and public cloud, giving you the elevated control of an on-premises data center with the on-demand scalability of CSPs. Place workloads in the best environment to optimize performance and total cost of ownership (TCO).
Consider the Benefits of Cloud Solutions
With easily deployable architecture, cloud-based solutions have revolutionized how organizations manage their IT resources, enabling greater agility, efficiency, and innovation.
Benefits of cloud solutions include:
- Improved scalability and access to resources: In the cloud, you can scale resources quickly and automatically based on fluctuating demands. Cloud solutions also allow employees and customers to access computing capabilities virtually anywhere a network or internet connection is available.
- Help reduce CapEx and increase uptime: CSPs allow you to access scalable infrastructure without the need to invest in or maintain additional servers. Many CSPs offer service-level agreements (SLAs) that help ensure uptime, making the cloud an appealing option for supporting business continuity.
- Simplified AI and security: CSPs provide access to the latest technology, including data security measures, which are often more robust and up to date than those employed by on-premises data centers. Organizations can also select cloud virtual machines (VMs) designed specifically for AI workloads that accelerate time to results, making it easier to integrate AI into daily workflows.
Understand Strategic Considerations for Cloud Solutions
Choosing the right cloud solution strategy is a critical decision for any organization, as it impacts everything from operational efficiency to data security and financial health. Taking the right approach can help limit risks while maximizing benefits.
Maintain Data Privacy and Compliance
The public cloud is a multitenant environment. This means that although workloads from different customers run in isolated VMs, they still share the same underlying infrastructure. As such, the public cloud cannot provide the same level of security and control as a private cloud environment. You need to be strategic about where your organization places sensitive workloads.
Look for cloud solutions offering encryption and isolation for data at rest, in use, and in transit, and be mindful of any compliance requirements for regulated data. For example, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in Europe and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) in the US have different requirements.
Keep Costs Under Control
While public cloud solutions often have a low initial cost and minimal CapEx, especially compared to private cloud infrastructure, your expenses can run out of control if not properly managed. Be aware of unexpected fees or workload spikes that can quickly run up costs. Cloud management platforms can help you monitor, analyze, and optimize your spend. This will help you choose the most cost-efficient cloud instances for your workloads.
Ensure Broad Compatibility
Start your cloud journey by examining how well your current infrastructure, applications, and data sources integrate with the cloud solutions you’re considering. Make sure the CSP or cloud solution vendor offers the APIs and developer tools that you need to facilitate integration. Look for cloud environments with a vibrant ecosystem of third-party solution providers that can help you adapt and enhance your cloud implementation as your needs grow.
Get Your Data Ready to Move
If your cloud solution provider uses proprietary platforms or your data can’t be ported to another solution without hefty fees, this can result in vendor lock-in and force you to use something that isn’t the best fit. Data portability is crucial when adopting a multicloud strategy, where your organization often moves data and workloads across environments. Before you engage the cloud, outline how you would repatriate or migrate cloud data if you decided to transition to another service and what costs this might entail.
Optimize and Rightsize
Although compute resources are abstracted in the cloud, it’s still worthwhile to pay attention to the underlying hardware running your containers and applications. The latest-generation processors, memory, and storage help deliver fast results on pay-as-you-go VMs, which can reduce overall spend. Some VMs may integrate the specific features you need, such as hardware-enabled confidential computing for enhanced security or matrix engines for AI acceleration.
Cloud Solution Use Cases
Organizations use cloud solutions to enable countless applications and use cases. Here are just a few examples:
Database Analytics
Advanced analytics can help you extract more value from unstructured data by finding patterns and predicting future outcomes. Cloud solutions help provide the scalable infrastructure needed to support advanced analytics, from breaking down data siloes with centralized cloud storage to enabling AI pipelines for real-time insights.
AI Chatbots and GenAI
For businesses of all sizes, chatbots powered by GenAI in the cloud can streamline customer service and improve productivity workflows for your teams. As your organization navigates the best way to deploy GenAI, the cloud offers access to resources with low risk and without a significant capital investment.
Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity
Leverage cloud computing resources and services to help protect critical data, applications, and IT infrastructure from disruptive events. The cloud is an ideal place to back up data or processes that are essential to your business operations. Many CSPs also offer cost-efficient alternatives for cold storage—data that is infrequently accessed—while still giving you the benefit of fully managed infrastructure.
Federated Learning
Federated learning is an approach to training AI models or running data analytics on shared data pools while keeping that data private. For example, healthcare institutions can use federated learning on patient data from multiple hospitals to develop new treatments, and financial institutions can use federated learning to track instances of fraud on an industry-wide scale.
Organizations need confidential computing-enabled VMs to take advantage of federated learning in the cloud. Confidential computing speaks to a set of hardware-enabled capabilities that isolate sensitive data and workloads from other processes within the same VM, the hypervisor, the cloud host, and other cloud tenants.
Choose the Right Cloud Solutions for Your Business
You set your capabilities, efficiency, security, and other parameters when you select your cloud infrastructure resources. Success in the cloud comes from balancing every strategic consideration over the long term. Intel® cloud solutions are designed with the big picture in mind and put you on a path to growth. They can help reduce complexity and accelerate time to market while placing industry-leading technology in your hands.
Choose a Powerful Cloud Processor
The processor is the beating heart of cloud infrastructure. It must be capable of efficiently handling the most-demanding applications and workloads. In many ways, processor choice also determines your ability to secure data, your readiness for AI, and your efforts to help reduce your carbon footprint.
Intel® Xeon® processors excel in the cloud while delivering consistent performance for diverse workloads. The latest Intel® Xeon® processors can help dramatically boost your capabilities and energy efficiency while helping reduce the number of VMs needed for demanding tasks. This means you can quickly deploy new applications and services, including AI.
When combined with Intel® Xeon® processors, Intel® FPGAs help deliver powerful data center acceleration with incredible performance per watt. These flexible, multipurpose devices can be reconfigured and customized for a variety of functions, including data compression and encryption.
Choose Robust Cloud Storage
By adopting the latest cloud storage solutions, you can help increase the availability and accessibility of data for workloads such as analytics, content delivery, and transactional databases. Intel® Storage Engines, available on the latest Intel® Xeon® processors, enable fast data movement, enhanced compression and encryption, and integrated NVMe device control while freeing up CPU resources for other important workloads.
Enhance Cloud Security
Silicon-enabled cloud security can add extra layers of protection for sensitive workloads in multitenant cloud environments. Features such as Intel® Trust Domain Extensions enable confidential computing by isolating VMs from the cloud host and other VMs.
Intel® Software Guard Extensions (Intel® SGX) creates a smaller trust boundary by isolating and encrypting data within trusted execution environments (TEEs). Other software in the VM, cloud tenants, or the cloud stack is denied access. These features provide attestation to support data sovereignty and compliance for regulated workloads, which are especially relevant in financial services, healthcare, and government.