Cloud Services – In Depth

GET CLOUD EMPOWERED. SEE HOW THE CLOUD CAN TRANSFORM YOUR BUSINESS.

Cloud computing is as much a paradigm shift in data center and IT management as it is a culmination of IT’s capacity to drive business ahead. It can be narrowly defined as “just-in-time provisioning and scaling of services on shared hardware.” But really, it’s an opportunity to completely transform how your business and its people work.

The cloud makes it possible for you to:

• Scale rapidly—up and down.
• Deploy services only when and where they’re needed.
• Deliver rich experiences across the PC, phone, and browser.
• Generate efficiencies and cost savings by paying as you go for only the services used.

In moving to the cloud, you can choose to implement any combination of several cloud models. The “public” cloud typically describes complete services offered by third-party providers. A “private” cloud involves organizations enabling their own cloud-computing capabilities on-premises or via dedicated hardware from a third-party host.

There are three basic models in mind:

• A private cloud is a set of computing resources that is dedicated to an organization, usually on-premises.
• A hosted private cloud has a dedicated infrastructure that’s hosted by a third-party but is inaccessible to other customers.
• A public cloud involves computing resources hosted externally but shared with other organizations and dynamically provisioned and billed on a utility basis – pay for what you use as you use it.

None of these models are all-encompassing. Part of the cloud’s unique power is its flexibility. Cloud models are designed to work together, so you can use the right models for your organization as well as for individual workloads.

6 WAYS TO REDUCE IT SPEND WITH CLOUD COMPUTING

A frequently touted benefit of cloud computing is IT cost reduction for businesses of all sizes. And you might be surprised to learn that this benefit applies whether you’re planning on a public or private cloud infrastructure.

The public cloud model often has the potential to serve up the most radical cost savings:

• Pay only for what you use, as you use it. This is perhaps the most compelling of any cloud value message. By moving your applications and workloads to a public cloud platform, your IT staff can instantly ratchet your resources up or down, depending on the immediate needs of any particular workload.
• Control server sprawl. Placing workloads in the cloud means those workloads no longer require dedicated server capital expenditure investments. While the cloud isn’t free, running applications there allows you to enjoy the possibility of reducing an application’s server count all the way to zero.
• Reduce data center facility costs. Fewer servers mean a smaller data center footprint. That translates to direct savings on real estate, power, and cooling. It also translates to indirect savings on business continuity and facilities maintenance. Even though these savings extend to the private cloud model, the public cloud model offers small and medium-size businesses the possibility of eliminating the need for a data center.

But as the new paradigm of cloud computing emerges, you’ll see that a combination of private and public cloud models will be the most popular implementation. This combination provides the most flexible IT infrastructure and has compelling costs savings of its own:

• Decrease IT management costs via virtualization. Scaling infrastructure to meet new workload demands, maintaining physical security, and software deployment and patching are just a few examples of costly IT management tasks that are decreased significantly by running a virtualized infrastructure.
• Decrease IT management further with IT as a Service. With private or hosted private clouds, your users will be able to provision many IT services on their own through self-service portals that can take direct action across a virtualized infrastructure. This can mean a significant savings on common help desk calls and other IT management tasks like procurement and server configuration. Specialized staffers are then free to concentrate their talents on tasks specific to your business rather than on general technical problems.
• Simplify IT chargeback models. Because private cloud computing enables your business to draw resources from a centralized pool of virtualized IT resources, the expensive siloed chargeback models that many enterprises use can evolve. CIOs will be able to allocate virtualized resources across workloads depending on immediate demand without the need for siloed purchasing or provisioning.

The cloud’s ability to save you money doesn’t end with decreased IT spending. It can extend to making your front-line business operations more agile and reliable and your business more competitive, which can help you actually add revenue. Using the cloud, you can deploy software and products more quickly and respond to market opportunities globally in a fraction of the time required today.

Getting started. Accurately forecasting your potential savings from cloud computing means a careful accounting of your current IT spend combined with detailed capacity planning for your immediate spending future. Then, work with your IT staff and your cloud provider to determine the best cloud deployment strategy and arrive at a detailed cost savings analysis.

CONNECT WORKERS AND TEAMS WITH CLOUD-BASED PRODUCTIVITY

Productivity is often considered the most popular business function for cloud migration for companies new to cloud computing. A Channel Insider article points to a July 2010 Gartner report projecting that cloud-based email and collaboration services will see 10% penetration of the enterprise email and messaging market by 2012 and will near 65% penetration by 2020. This growth is predicted for several reasons:

• Lower cost. Companies can save significantly. Users of public cloud email will eliminate messaging server sprawl, with associated decreases in data center facilities costs. But even private clouds offer collaboration cost savings, including decreased hardware expense and simplified failover and data recovery options.
• Service maturity. Because the concept of hosted email has been around for so long, many CIOs feel that cloud-based email may be the most mature cloud service available today. That means more reliability on the cloud provider’s side, more deployment and access options, and an easier time negotiating your SLA.
• Flexibility. Where traditional hosted email simply hosts n number of mailboxes for your organization, cloud-based email enables full integration with the rest of your infrastructure – even if that infrastructure is still located on your premises in a hybrid cloud infrastructure. Your IT staffers manage local and cloud-based mailboxes with the same set of tools. This not only makes rote management tasks easier, but also enables more responsiveness to new requirements.
• Better user experience. Workers in other countries often find that distance can make connections to in-house resources unreliable. With cloud communication and messaging, you can provide more reliable global user connectivity. A high degree of reliability is especially crucial for helping users accept and work with collaboration tools.

Email and collaboration tools are hugely important for meeting today’s business productivity requirements. Cloud computing makes these resources easier for your IT staff to manage and easier and more reliable for your users to access. Those using public cloud resources can investigate Software as a Service (SaaS) offerings such as email integrated with Voice over IP (VoIP) phone services, content sharing and management, and electronic meeting software. Public cloud service providers can offer these capabilities as a service – no deployment headaches required. Along with providing users the ability to connect globally and across a variety of target devices, cloud computing eliminates the cost of buying servers and infrastructure for lots of branch and remote offices. If you’re looking for a first workload with which to try cloud computing, email and collaboration services provide a great place to start.

Even as you’re evaluating moving your email, messaging and team collaboration platforms to the cloud, however, you should be using lessons learned to evaluate whether other business functions should live there as well. One example might be your line of business (LOB) applications. LOB applications are often the last to be considered for cloud migration because their deployment, management, and use represent the core of IT competitive advantage for many companies. But with the new agility the cloud can offer, smart CIOs are looking at LOB cloud migrations much sooner, seeking new competitive capabilities and an easier time reaching new markets.

And consider the concept of moving parts or all of your IT infrastructure into the cloud. Because of its customizability, many CIOs are looking to save significant dollars this way using combination of the following models:

• Physical server and network infrastructure, called Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
• Server platforms and management, called Platform as a Service (PaaS)
• Specific application workloads, called Software as a Service (SaaS).

Collectively, these models can be viewed as IT as a Service (ITaaS), which not only represents the essence of cloud computing, but also encapsulates the paradigm shift cloud computing will have on traditional datacenter and IT management.

Getting started. Audit your email and messaging usage for the last several years to forecast where this service is going in your company. Factor in areas of functionality you’d like to add – voice, document sharing, etc. Then talk to your cloud provider about options, deployment, and pricing.

YOU CAN TAKE GREATER CONTROL WITH THE CLOUD

Loss of IT operational control is possibly the most common misconception about cloud computing. Yes, unless you stick entirely to a private cloud model, the cloud does require a certain amount of IT and infrastructure outsourcing. But what makes the cloud such a paradigm shift is that you’re not locked into an all-or-nothing approach. Work carefully with your cloud provider and make sure it can offer you all the control your IT operation needs.

Any form of outsourcing requires the loss of some direct control, but compared to traditional outsourcing, the cloud offers far more options for maintaining a controlled and entirely customized cloud computing experience. To gain the most from these options, you can:

• Leverage all the right cloud models for your enterprise. You’re not locked into a single cloud model. Make sure that your on-premises and off-premises cloud models are designed to work together with a common management model, a common identity model, and a common application development model. By utilizing cloud models on a workload basis, you can maintain physical control over assets or work streams that simply can’t be outsourced, and you can still take advantage of public cloud benefits for the rest of your portfolio. Work with your cloud provider to build an SLA that protects your company’s processes, and investigate updates to your current IT management software tools to make sure that your IT staff has visibility and control over all assets whether on-premises or off.
• Protect your critical data. Fear of losing control over critical company data is often another stumbling block in cloud adoption. The truth, however, is that cloud computing can give you as much or even more control over your data, not less. For example, data that can’t be moved can stay on-premises and cloud providers offer a plethora of options for protecting the data entrusted to them – sometimes more than your in-house IT staff and budget could make available. In all situations, however, data sovereignty should belong to you. Stay away from cloud providers that cannot guarantee that your data won’t be mined or used for another organization’s commercial purposes. Work up a detailed list of requirements that will both satisfy your need to control your IT infrastructure and leverage the benefits of cloud computing.
• Detail requirements with your SLA. If you’re worried about runaway costs, just remember your SLA. Plan your migration carefully and involve your cloud provider as much as possible. Choose a cloud provider that can meet up-front costs easily. Choosing one that already supports an application stack compatible with the apps you’re running in-house will help lessen migration and integration costs and protect the financial investment you’ve already made in your current software portfolio. Ask about compatible management tools; making sure the cloud provider supports tools that your IT staff is familiar with or already using will help you save money on both new tool purchases and staff training.

Make sure these and any other requirements necessary for your business are detailed in your SLA. Definitely cover the basics – 99.9% up-time and 24/7 customer support are good places to start – but take the time to go as deep as your organization needs. Your cloud provider must recognize that not all software is ready to run in the cloud today – and not just for technical reasons. The beauty of the cloud is that you’re not locked into a single model. Outsource what makes sense, and keep the rest on-premises. If your prospective cloud provider can’t support that to your satisfaction, keep looking.

The other most common misconception about cloud computing is security. Moving critical data to the cloud is a difficult proposition for many CIOs worried about data security. Fortunately, if you look closely, you’ll find that competitive cloud providers, with highly trained on-premises staff and enterprise-class datacenter facilities, can offer as much or more security for your data than what most companies are using now. Start the conversation with your cloud provider today, and ask the tough questions. Use the cloud’s unprecedented flexibility to build a cloud computing solution that both enhances your IT capabilities and helps protect your critical data.

Getting started. Not losing control starts with knowing what needs to be controlled. An accurate list of requirements is paramount here, and that’s a discussion for your IT department. Matching that list to your cloud provider’s capabilities comes next followed by customization to get that final level of control while decreasing costs.