This way to the Cloud

Well, is the cloud the next great IT innovation? It could be or it could be a wispy apparition that dissipates on the winds of poor planning. Public Cloud, Private Cloud, Hybrid Cloud, SaaS, PaaS, or IaaS are all sophisticated buzzwords to us “mere mortals” that conjure up images of cutting edge technologies that will resolve all our Information Technology issues. However, I maintain that if we limit our thoughts about “The Cloud” strictly to technology, we are in for a disappointment. If we only complete an element of the cloud environment (e.g., server consolidation) we are only going to get a portion of the benefit of what the strategy and architecture of cloud computing can provide.

We need to begin our path to the cloud by defining the business problems that need to be solved, explicitly set goals, and translate these pain points into services that need to be delivered. During this blog discussion, I am going to suggest certain business imperatives that cloud computing addresses introduce a framework that I believe is critical to the eventual desired end state of cloud computing.

• First of all a major promise of cloud computing is a much better approach to helping IT drive greater agility…



• Secondly, the cloud has proven to lower costs (60% on CapEX, 30% on OpEx and up to 80% on Energy)



• The third business imperative that is addressed is ensuring compliance and security, while also maintain business-required service levels

OK, now what are these layers critical to a successfully end state of cloud computing – There are Three…

1. Your infrastructure and existing investments: Organizations must take existing IT processes and ensure that they can be brought into the cloud environment.
   


2. The growing demand for a new brew of business applications. Ultimately, infrastructure is there simply to support applications. So it’s important for us to address this layer as well. How we approach applications can affect both costs – OPEX, and Agility.



3. The third tier is our End User. The challenge is to enable end users with the freedom to have access anytime, from anywhere while still ensuring security, and support all of this in a cost-effective manner.
   
   Over the next weeks and months I will expand on this framework by discussing how the leading vendors are addressing these issues – so watch this space…