Riskonnect delivers risk management solutions on a world-class cloud-computing architecture.
What does that mean to you?
All systems require the following to work:
- A physical location to store and process the data. For Internet-based systems, this is referred to as a data center. These facilities vary greatly in reliability and security.
- Computer servers (i.e. hardware) that run the operating systems and software for the application.
- Operating system and database software that determines how the information is stored and processed by the application.
- The platform software that includes broad capabilities such as data entry, workflow, report processing, data integration and security.
- The application itself which includes the ability to perform specific business tasks.
Riskonnect is different from all other providers in that items 1 through 4 are handled by a cloud–computing provider – the Force.com platform provided by Salesforce.com. This platform allows Riskonnect to focus on specific customer needs delivered via the application itself, while having the assurance that all of the back-end technology is getting focused investment and resources.
Analogies often help bring clarity. Do you worry about how electricity gets to your house? Or how water gets to your faucet?
What cloud-computing is not
Now that the benefits of cloud-computing have gained widespread and enthusiastic acceptance, the term cloud-computing is being co-opted by some to ascribe favorable attributes to legacy systems and “less than robust” platforms. To avoid the confusion, one must understand the following concepts:
- Private Cloud – The renaming of legacy home grown data centers as “private clouds” has become a popular way to deflect attention from the inherent cost and challenges of running a private data center (e.g. The expense of keeping the technology up to date, the onerous security requirements, the challenges of slow response time, frequent system outages, real-time disaster recovery/redundancy and constant system performance tuning). At the end of the day, renaming a data center a private cloud should not be confused with “cloud-computing.”
- Cloud Computing Database Servers – While the Force.com cloud-computing platform provides all services from hardware, database technology, performance tuning, disaster recovery, security, application toolbox, Web Services, E-mail Services, workflow and “drag and drop” configurability, other offerings have recently entered the marketplace by opening up their database servers to the public for hosting data. They offer security, back-up, data administration and disaster recovery but no extensive toolboxes to build or configure applications rapidly and inexpensively.
- Collaboration tools – Still others have stitched together a group of collaboration tools such as e-mail, shared documents, calendaring and automation tools and referred to these offerings as cloud-computing.
Because of the popularity of the cloud-computing term, each of these offerings has designated themselves as running “in the cloud.” The important take away from this is that one must look deeper when being presented with a cloud-computing label.