Cloud computing is transforming the way IT is deployed, maintained and consumed by enterprises. In my customer interactions, there is a strong interest in cloud computing and a strange sense of urgency. The focus is mainly on the technology building blocks, which is definitely critical. But, the key point I emphasize in such discussions is that Cloud computing is not just a transformation of the IT technology, its a trio of people- process-technology transformation.
Start with in-house virtualization/resource pooling: Cloud computing, irrespective of whether it is internal private cloud, or a third party service, it does take away control from the traditional IT administrators running on physical dedicated resource silos. I think this is a fundamental shift in people mindset and processes, which might be non-trivial to accomplish in a single step.
Enterprises that have already virtualized their storage and server resources creating a shared resource pool are much closer to adoption of cloud services. Virtualization is being adopted for the obvious reasons: cost, power, elasticity, availability, and aligning IT usage with business priorities. One of the hidden advantage of virtualization is IT process transformation. I refer to this as getting your house in order. It helps acquire the appropriate tools, best practices, and IT automation processes for provisioning, backup and restore, disaster recovery, performance isolation, data security, problem diagnosis, chargeback/billing. This really forms the starting point to consider cloud computing, whether private or a third party service
Walk before you can run. CIO and IT architects are continually dealing with shrinking budgets (capex and opex), while managing new creed of analytics/BI applications that are both storage and compute hungry. With in-house resources virtualized, the cloud can be seen really as another virtualized resource pool that exposes various services ranging from basic Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) to Platform- and Software-as-a-Service. The decision of using the correct form of aaS, is then essentially a function of costs, workload characteristics, comfort-level working with the vendor, and level of security and provenance required for the data.
Given this background, IT architects are increasingly looking at cloud as an extension of server-storage virtualization. That is an interesting opportunity for vendors having control points in the virtualization space. For instance, this might explain positioning of the VMWorld conference with a strong cloud focus.
Start with in-house virtualization/resource pooling: Cloud computing, irrespective of whether it is internal private cloud, or a third party service, it does take away control from the traditional IT administrators running on physical dedicated resource silos. I think this is a fundamental shift in people mindset and processes, which might be non-trivial to accomplish in a single step.
Enterprises that have already virtualized their storage and server resources creating a shared resource pool are much closer to adoption of cloud services. Virtualization is being adopted for the obvious reasons: cost, power, elasticity, availability, and aligning IT usage with business priorities. One of the hidden advantage of virtualization is IT process transformation. I refer to this as getting your house in order. It helps acquire the appropriate tools, best practices, and IT automation processes for provisioning, backup and restore, disaster recovery, performance isolation, data security, problem diagnosis, chargeback/billing. This really forms the starting point to consider cloud computing, whether private or a third party service
Walk before you can run. CIO and IT architects are continually dealing with shrinking budgets (capex and opex), while managing new creed of analytics/BI applications that are both storage and compute hungry. With in-house resources virtualized, the cloud can be seen really as another virtualized resource pool that exposes various services ranging from basic Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) to Platform- and Software-as-a-Service. The decision of using the correct form of aaS, is then essentially a function of costs, workload characteristics, comfort-level working with the vendor, and level of security and provenance required for the data.
Given this background, IT architects are increasingly looking at cloud as an extension of server-storage virtualization. That is an interesting opportunity for vendors having control points in the virtualization space. For instance, this might explain positioning of the VMWorld conference with a strong cloud focus.
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