Pervasive Intelligence Now

CHAPTER 3 The Cloud—The Foundation for Pervasive Intelligence

Embracing new technologies is a foundational component of embedding data intelligence in your organization—of making it pervasive. Making intelligence pervasive gives you the ability to better understand and interpret your environment and become more responsive to business and market needs. The foundation of this pervasive intelligence is a cutting-edge technical infrastructure that supports dynamic technologies. That cutting-edge infrastructure is the cloud.

CLOUDS—WHAT’S BEST FOR YOU?

There are many types of cloud: on-premises, public, private, hybrid—with ever-changing variations on each of those terms, according to the particular cloud service provider. How can you know what’s best for you? It’s simple. What’s right for you is the configuration that lets you worry the least, while achieving the best business outcomes.

• On-premises clouds

  On-premises clouds offer the ultimate in security and control, but you have to provide the footprint, the physical hardware, security, and IT resources to manage the entire infrastructure. With public clouds, you don’t have to provide the hardware, but you still have to provide resources to manage the process, and there’s the issue of sharing space and of possible outages.

CLOUD OPTIONS

• On premises—The ultimate in security and control, but space and sharing may be issues down the line.
• Private—Dedicated to you, but hosted by a provider. Takes time to ramp up or ramp down. ...