Cloud Computing: How to Get Some

cloud

‘Cloud computing' is nothing more than a service (ideally self-service) model where business workloads are deployed and transparently executed internally or somewhere on the Internet with businesses only paying for what they consume. With that said, ESG speaks with plenty of IT organizations that deploy two physical servers and a handful of virtual machines and call it their cloud. Are they wrong?

Achieving a highly automated IT environment controlled via business policy requires a few important stepping stones along the way. We also have to keep in mind that businesses may choose to adopt the cloud in many different forms: managed service, SaaS, infrastructure as a service, test/ dev, etc.  ESG even sees businesses looking at hosted desktops!

Here are some key stages in the evolution to keep in mind:

Virtualize
Virtualization at all tiers is a key ingredient to cloud computing. Server virtualization, network virtualization, storage virtualization, and desktop virtualization are all important for a dynamic, fluid environment.

Standardize
At this stage, the new computing infrastructure is the platform of choice. For example, companies adopt a “virtualize first” policy. Dedicated physical infrastructure incurs a penalty and new applications are developed either ready to use the cloud or specifically designed for the cloud.

Automate
Now that the environment has becoming highly virtualized and standards are in place, business policies begin to drive the underlying infrastructure. For example, an application or line of business owner utilizes a self service window that transfers the control of being able to dial in (or out) performance, availability, security, bandwidth, etc. and the infrastructure seamlessly reacts—and they only get charged for what they consume. From their perspective, the workload may be using local IT services or Internet based services... but it shouldn’t matter to them.

Cloud computing is ultimately all about operational efficiency that leverages a highly dynamic, self healing, automated IT environment that can grow and shrink on demand—enabling the right size environment all the time.