How SMBs can migrate to the cloud – securely

Migrating data securely from existing data centres to private clouds needn’t be a headache for SMBs

According to a recent Computing survey* , 64% of SMBs cited data security as the biggest concern when using and migrating to cloud technologies. This is hardly surprising given the lack of visibility that the cloud presents and that many SMBs have a skills deficit when it comes to the cloud. However, with the promise of reduced costs, increased efficiency and greater agility, businesses need to find a way to alleviate their concerns and take the leap of faith into a cloud architecture.

In theory, data should be just as secure in a private cloud as it is in an existing data centre. However, the problem is that many migration projects are often rushed or not completed properly due to pressure from the business to simply ‘get it done’ – particularly in the case of SMBs who often have limited time and resources to dedicate to such projects.

Yet, before any migration project, it’s important to understand the current business environment and goals, which in turn should help clarify why the data needs to be migrated and any configuration requirements. One way businesses can do this is by conducting a full audit and clean-up of the organisation’s security environment before starting the migration process. This should include both scope-based and role-based access requirements – in other words, who needs access to what and what they can do to it.

When it comes to the actual migration of the data, one of the easiest and secure ways to do so is through a two-stage migration process. This means attaching non-virtual, physical, existing servers to cloud storage – treating this as storage-as-a-service – then migrating the compute workload as and when the business is ready.

It’s also important to remember that on premise applications tend to have their own local security model. In other words, they are secured within the application themselves. So when migrating data to the private cloud, organisations need to make sure that the security controls they want to put in place at the application level are also applied at the data level. One way to do this is with the help of a cloud management platform that is able to manage all controls consistently from one place.

While on the surface a move to the cloud may appear daunting, if handled correctly, and with the support of the right technology, organisations need not worry. In an environment where competition is high and agility is paramount, SMBs really cannot afford not to embrace the cloud.

In many respects, SMBs stand to benefit the most from cloud-based technologies. By working with a trusted advisor or partner to help reach their cloud goals, they now have an opportunity to level the playing field and increase their competitiveness against their enterprise counterparts.

Wizards, tutorials and analytics – do more with your cloud

Cloud isn’t just about technology

Offering a cloud service is not only about deploying VM instances, managing templates or delivering DevOps agility to your organisation. When you decide to productise and customise your cloud service, you need to think about other collateral actions that will directly contribute to the success of your cloud project.

Features such as multi-branding and multi-language support are a big help and Abiquo has incorporated them from the very beginning. But styling and localizing the user interface might not be enough. There will be differences between the vocabulary used in a DevOps environment and that used in an enterprise, or an MSP service. So Abiquo has always enabled our customers to customise the vocabulary and terms their users will see. For example, a tenant in an MSP environment might be a department in an enterprise space. In other environments this could be a project or a unit.

Use your own business terms

In Abiquo 3.2 we have improved this supporting feature by separating “default” terms from “customised” terms in two different files, enabling you to more easily preserve your customisation between releases, thereby simplifying the maintenance process.

And our reseller model support enables you to manage different brands on the same Abiquo platform, by deploying different language files and other customisations in separate domains, thereby enabling full function delegation to reseller companies that will offer your cloud services to their end customers.

But now we’ve taken this a step further. In the new Abiquo 3.2 release we incorporate two important new capabilities to improve the take-up and efficiency of your cloud platform.

Wizards and Tutorials

Even if you think your platform is the easiest platform in the world to use, new users probably have a different view when presented with a rich set of portal functions. Abiquo has always had comprehensive documentation and “getting started” guides on the Abiquo wiki but as nobody really likes to read manuals, we’ve added a key capability to help get your users familiar with the platform.

Abiquo 3.2 incorporates the ability to create custom wizards and tutorials for your users. Abiquo will include some of these out of the box, and you can develop your own step-by-step tutorials to enable users to learn about your specific features and processes, and wizards to guide them through tasks. Add videos, animated GIFs, HTML, and whatever else you need to guide the user through the platform. You can identify any Abiquo element by ID or name, and highlight it. You can also prevent the user from moving to the next step until they click a specific button, and much more cool stuff.

Even better, you can create specific tutorials for each role on the platform, as you will see in the following video.

You may like to use this to introduce new features, services or application templates to your users – it’s much more immediate and interactive than an email newsletter!

Add Javascript Snippets

Do you have a Support system? Do you want to know if your users like your latest feature? Do you want to incorporate a chat to interact with them? Nowadays there are hundreds (or even thousands) of SaaS companies that offer their advanced systems to incorporate in your site. Why not in Abiquo? Abiquo 3.2 enables you to organize all these snippets and show them in your Abiquo UI. When you do this, the result is really cool!

The above screenshot shows how you can add a UserVoice widget to ask your users about their satisfaction with the service, and enable them to add new ideas or send a message. On the right, a chat box provides direct on-line contact between your user and the service desk.

You can also use this with analytics tools such as Google Analytics to understand how your users interact with your Abiquo cloud platform.

These are two of the new features added in Abiquo 3.2 to boost your production cloud services. But there are more to come, because for Abiquo these kinds of capabilities are as important as supporting a new cloud provider or a new technology. Because we understand that user satisfaction will be a key indicator in measuring the success of your service.

As always, you will see our new features very soon in Abiquo anyCloud