Today, more and more IT organizations have stated plans to migrate to the cloud to improve operational cost efficiencies and to provide better services to the business users.
The challenge that these companies face lies around the choice of an application performance management solution which would best fit their need and at the same time gives them the desired output.
For many of the public cloud service providers anticipating the demand from businesses to prove performance of application delivery with Service Level Agreements is at the forefront.
Businesses today demand Service Level Agreements from their service providers and a view of the performance of the services they subscribe to. So the choice of the solution needs to be capable of collecting and reporting service level metrics, such as end user response time, traffic usage, and volume for each business accounts. The architecture of such solutions needs to be multi-tenant – meaning it can collect, analyze, host and report on performance metrics for each individual business account.
Monthly Archives: June 2013
To Future Proof or Not, That Is the Question
“To be or not to be” is the famous opening phrase of Hamlet’s well-known soliloquy in Shakespeare’s play “Hamlet.” In the soliloquy, Hamlet questions the meaning of life, and whether or not it is worthwhile to stay alive when life contains so many risks and hardships. He concludes that the primary reason people stay alive is due to a fear of death and the uncertainty of what lies beyond. Now what does this passage in Hamlet have to do with future proofing a business or monetization? Many organizations grapple with unknowns as well. “Do I just focus on the now and not worry about the future? Change is scary; risk is even scarier, so I can’t be bothered thinking about the future.” For many, the future never comes as the decisions made in the present impact their ability to define their future. Instead their business is defined very precisely for them by what a billing system can deliver in the present. What seemed like a non-risk suddenly becomes life or death for the business.
What CIOs Need to Consider When Migrating to Cloud Is the Next Big Move
In enterprises across the globe, CIOs are looking cautiously in one direction: up – to the cloud. Migrating to the cloud changes not only the operations of the data center but also the roles of the CIO and IT staff. As a result, management must carefully weigh the pros and cons of shifting to cloud-based computing so that they can prepare their organizations and themselves for change that cascades across budgets, vendor relations, job descriptions and career paths, as well as infrastructure and processes.
The benefits of moving from an on-premises model to subscription-based, cloud-hosted computing are substantial. With cloud computing, CIOs have the opportunity to capitalize on a variable-cost structure. Until recently, data centers have needed to load up with hardware, software and networking devices to prepare for peak periods, even though these investments may lie underused or dormant for significant periods. Traditionally, IT costs only go up. By employing the cloud, however, IT departments pay for only the infrastructure and applications that they use, as they need them. They can easily scale up when the business grows or during peak selling seasons, then scale back if the economy shrinks. Over time, the cost of Software-as-a-Service subscriptions is far lower than that of licensing fees for software, middleware and databases, along with expenditures on hardware and staff to maintain it all.
Big Data: “Like Moneyball for Geeks”
2013 is turning into a big year for Big Data. Colorfully described by one commentator recently as being “like Moneyball for geeks”, Big Data is – quite literally – the Next Big Thing. The big data analytics marketplace is truly heating up in terms of interest, activity, technology and competition.
Cloud-Based DevOps
By working with IT across the software development lifecycle via cloud-based DevOps, development teams can decrease software bottlenecks, increase code output and be seen as drivers of the business.
I have a confession. I am Shadow IT. I am the guilty party operations and security love to hate because I expense tens of thousands of dollars in cloud services…every month. Truth be told, my team and I couldn’t afford to wait in line for IT to provision the resources we needed to begin work. We had goals to meet and objectives to achieve – all of which didn’t include waiting in line for IT to give us virtual machines, development platforms or set up sandboxes so we could begin work.
With a lengthy approval process and cost justifications, there was no way I would have been able to secure either the physical infrastructure or cloud vendor approvals I needed to achieve the business unit’s goals. And, honestly, the risk of choosing a vendor that would leak our data, or otherwise put the business at risk, seemed a lot lower than the risk of not getting my job done.
So, even though my monthly cloud bill continued to rise, it didn’t surprise me too much that I was never questioned about the expense because my team was delivering. And, that is exactly what everyone from the business side of things cares about – is development creating new applications and/or services that can be brought to market before the competition? Can we secure ‘first-mover’ status or market leadership because development is firing on all cylinders? These are the questions marketing, business development, and other teams ask. Not, did central IT get you those VMs you needed?
Cloud Enables a Win-Win on Both Sides of the Business
“I believe it is incumbent on the Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) and/or System Integrators (SIs) to understand the regulatory and compliance-related issues that their customers face,” noted Manjula Talreja, VP of Global Cloud Business Development at Cisco, in this exclusive Q&A with Cloud Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan. “Of course these issues are different in each industry and in each country.”
Cloud Computing Journal: The move to cloud isn’t about saving money, it is about saving time – agree or disagree?
Manjula Talreja: Putting aside the old adage that “time is money,” Cisco agrees that cloud is more about creating efficiencies in business processes. This is true for the cloud consumers (to take advantage of new technologies more quickly and with maximum flexibility and to tap into pay-as-you grow business models where they pay only for what they consume). This is equally true for cloud providers (to create new services rapidly and with fewer barriers to sell, offer services to qualified resellers, and create demand for those services).
What CIOs Need to Know Today About SDN
SDN is a new, dynamic network architecture that transforms traditional network backbones into more intelligent service-delivery platforms. IT leaders can use SDN as a tool to change the way they do business. For example, enterprises can foster closer relationships with their customers by offering greater online access to select data over the enterprise network. A financial services firm can give large corporate customers the opportunity for third-party reporting, governance, or even allow analytics firms to directly access enterprise credit card transactions, obviating the need for intermediate sites and cumbersome manual process steps that are needed to provide sufficient multi-level security. An SDN would create virtual network partitions governed by stringent and limited access policies, and security to decrease unauthorized access.
Policy-Driven Application Management
Millennium Pharmacy Systems, Inc., has successfully deployed mission critical SaaS applications, and implemented advanced IT management and operational efficiency processes and systems to keep all the applications up to date, compliant, performant, and protected.
Managing applications sprawl has long been a burr in the IT saddle, and the popularity of software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications hasn’t exactly been a balm on the situation.
As with on-premises applications, the key to SaaS and hybrid apps is getting better visibility and operational data on the applications’ health, and then automating the processes across standardized methods and controls.
Workday Has Not, Repeat Not, Left Amazon
Last week, on the last day of HP’s Discover conference in Las Vegas, HP software chief Bill Veghte stood on stage and said that Workday, the promising HR SaaS company started by David Duffield, who also started PeopleSoft only to lose it to Oracle’ ravenous appetite for acquisitions, had left Amazon Web Services for HP’s OpenStack-based Public Cloud because enterprise customers need real support and stronger SLAs than Amazon offers.
CRN captured the moment, but didn’t check it out.
Veghte’s statement made tweeters sit up and take note, and Amazon denied it.
People, process, technology for Cloud service providers
People, Process, Technology for Cloud Service Providers
There’s been a lot written in cloud circles about the preparations enterprises need to make to prepare for the move to cloud – but what about service providers? A lot of service providers are coming from a managed hosting, managed services or even a telco background and are now building a cloud business. The planning, provisioning, marketing & selling of cloud services can be vastly different from these more traditional IT services. Potential cloud service providers need to prepare for their transformation to cloud from a people, process and technology perspective.
People: The Who
The people part is all about understanding the diverse cloud needs that different users within your customers’ organizations will have. For example, consider the control, visibility and cost transparency requirements that IT leaders may have compared to the day to day governance and performance concerns of IT line managers. Also …