By Francis Czekalski, Consulting Architect, LogicsOne
Earlier this month I presented at GreenPages’ annual Summit Event. My breakout presentation this year was an End User Computing Super Session. In this video, I summarize the ‘top 10 ways to kill your VDI project.’
If you’re interested in learning more, download this free on-demand webinar where I share some real world VDI battlefield stories.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9w1o0O8IaI
The choice to move to cloud is becoming clearer every day. But the choices within that decision are becoming more fraught as the marketplace develops and a wider selection of delivery models and platforms.
The onus is also increasingly falling on CIOs to be the chief decision makers with regards to how cloud should fit within the organization.
Here are a few measures for how to best determine what cloud will be best for your business.
The technology
The component pieces of the cloud provider’s technology need to sync with what you are already working with, as well as what you will be looking to integrate going forward.
One of the great things about cloud platforms (generally) is that there is a degree of interchangeability since the technology is treated as a commodity. However, depending on whom you choose to go with, this is going to be easier or …
Cloud Computing – let’s take a deep breath and level set for a minute. Public or private? Reduce IT cost & complexity or drive new business innovation? Is cloud always less expensive? What is meant by an «open» cloud? What is a cloud ecosystem? Cloud and the nexus of technology? The cloud promise has evolved so quickly over the last 5 years, that embarking on the cloud journey can be a challenging task in itself. While many companies are enjoying tremendous value and innovation from adoption, others are still mapping out their unique roadmap.
Conventional wisdom is that the fastest connection between two points- for example between today and tomorrow – is a straight line. But just like in aviation this is not necessarily true in cloud computing. First because cloud computing is not one thing (not one dot on the map) it is a conglomerate of many different types of services (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, BPaaS) each with its own characteristics and following its own timeline.
According to a report from Verizon, enterprises are increasing their average monthly cloud spend by 45% with cloud environments becoming “more mainstream”.
The overall sense from the Verizon report, which was conducted between January 2012 and June 2013, was that the enterprise cloud was becoming more and more critical to business strategy.
Cloud-based storage capability went up by 90% during this time, with cloud-based memory usage increasing 100%.
The report examined the current state of the enterprise cloud, quoting a survey from the Economist Intelligence Unit whereby almost half of professionals evaluate cloud models over traditional software when it came to investments.
Verizon puts this down to six primary reasons: cost; provisioning speed; compliance; focus; performance and accessibility.
Despite this however, the report notes the majority of enterprises are in “phase one” of cloud adoption, only risking low commodity items. Yet the future, as one would expect, is hybrid.
“Hybrid …
Before you get any further, let me reiterate – these are totally unscientific and the sample size is rather small as it was taken from two sessions at the conference focusing on SDN and application services. The good news is that the results pretty much mirror every other survey and research with respect to devops, cloud, and SDN.
One of my favorite questions is to determine whether cloud is being adopted because it makes sense or because it’s a mandate from on high. As expected, the majority (62%) of respondents indicated the adoption of cloud in their organization was… a company mandate.
Why should enterprises move data and applications into the cloud? The discussion on cloud strategy is still to this day focused on cost-reduction, primarily featuring economies achieved in infrastructure, platform and even applications. Certainly no one is going to argue that this is all worth thinking about; every business needs to be aware of cost reduction opportunities.
However a complete cloud strategy for an enterprise needs to be a whole lot more comprehensive than that. Enterprises, big and smaller, need to stretch their minds to take in the business opportunities that emerge from a cloud way of working, opportunities that are difficult or impossible to achieve in an environment of discrete platforms and applications.
WatchGuard has announced its first UTM (Unified Threat Management) solution for Microsoft’s Windows Azure cloud computing platform. With organisations worldwide pouring vast amounts of sensitive data, applications and services into the cloud, secure data access is paramount. With WatchGuard’s XTM security appliances, these companies are now able to ensure secure cloud access while leveraging WatchGuard’s comprehensive and multi-layered defence across network, email, web and content security.
«Windows Azure’s cloud scalability, speed, and economics make it a compelling option for our customers that want to take advantage of the cloud while continuing to use their on-premises infrastructure,» said David Aiken, Group Product Marketing Manager, Windows Azure, Microsoft. «These customers require secure data access from on-premises networks to the cloud, and WatchGuard’s unified threat management platform helps extend on-premises datacentres to the cloud while assuring secure access.»
Continued growth of global Parallels Automation deployments is providing valuable insights into the cloud applications, and more specifically, the APS-enabled cloud applications that are gaining traction with service providers and with SMBs. Below are a few key trends:
To dig deeper into these trends and understand how they apply to your market, contact your Parallels account lead to schedule a market review, or contact me directly at srowan@parallels.com.
Steph Rowan, Market Development, Parallels
Cloud computing offers compelling benefits for IT and the business to gain on-demand access to IT resources for new application development as well as for running existing applications. VMware vCloud Hybrid Service is a secure, dedicated infrastructure-as-a-service hybrid cloud owned and hosted by VMware, built on the trusted foundation of VMware vSphere. The service supports existing applications and new application development, giving you a common platform for seamlessly extending your existing data center to the cloud while leveraging the same tools and processes you use today.