Going to the London Cloud: Security, Virtualisation and Disaster Recovery

By Kulvinder Gill | Tuesday, May 24th, 2011

Earlier this month Eze Castle Integration officially announced the expansion of our cloud computing and hosted application offerings to London. To create awareness and educate hedge fund managers, the London team hosted a cloud computing seminar on 18 May 2011.

The seminar featured a panel of Eze Castle Integration experts and covered a variety of topics including security, virtualisation and disaster recovery. Below are some of the key points that were touched upon at the London cloud computing event.

Security: Understanding Multi-tenancy
Multi-tenancy is fundamental to cloud computing and a key component of cloud services including Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) or Software as a Service (SaaS). The Whatis.com IT encyclopedia defines multi-tenancy as “an architecture in which a single instance of a software application serves multiple customers.”

As discussed in our application security in the cloud article, when looking at Infrastructure as a Service multi-tenancy means customers can control processing power, networking components, the operating system, storage and deployed applications, but do not control the underlying physical infrastructure. In the Software as a Service model, customers share all or part of an application but do not control the underlying platform or infrastructure.

These two approaches can deliver security on-par with in-house services, but firms should thoroughly evaluate a cloud service provider and ask detailed questions about their provider’s practices as part of the appraisal process.

Virtualisation and Disaster Recovery in the Cloud
Today, virtualisation is a mainstream technology that has numerous uses and delivers many benefits to firms. One advantage of virtualisation is that it can help drive costs down considerably in disaster recovery environments. The reason for this is that traditionally companies have procured a second set of equipment – that was a mirror image of the production environment – and set it up in an off-site disaster recovery location. They would then replicate data from a production environment to the data recovery environment. Needless to say, buying a second set of equipment can be costly and time-consuming to maintain.

With the advent of virtualisation and cloud computing, firms no longer need to purchase an exact replica of their production environment. They now have new options for setting up a cost-effective disaster recovery site that addresses their recovery and security requirements while leveraging economies of scale.

One option is to work with a managed cloud service provider to “rent” disaster recovery space in their cloud. Another option for a firm is to procure and virtualize their own secondary hardware, which can also be managed by a third-party, and house it in an off-site co-location facility.

These are just two examples of how cloud computing is altering the way firms build their technology infrastructures. The possibilities are great in the cloud.

Eze Castle Integration’s Cloud Services
Our expansive portfolio of cloud services is ideal for hedge funds and investment management firms seeking flexible, secure and reliable solutions. With the launch of our London cloud, hedge funds worldwide may now take advantage of the wide range of offerings from the Eze Cloud, including: