Tuesday, June 14, 2011

To race or not to race to cloud computing?

To race or not to race to cloud computing?



Towards the end of 2009 many were predicting that 2010 would be the year of countless cloud deployments. While it is true that the race to the cloud has begun, it is not being run as quickly as people first expected.  

Over the next 12 to18 months, while companies are making decisions on their future IT infrastructure, many will no doubt ask: “Will this decision exclude me from the cloud later on?” As a  result we are likely to see companies defining what cloud computing means to them, their business and their infrastructure. 

For those considering the cloud, and resellers, the following steps are worth considering.

Step 1: Deploying private clouds
More and more businesses will start to trial private cloud deployments to realize cost savings; some have started with email, storage and voice. To eliminate complexity, these companies need to look for ‘trusted cloud partners’ to help guide them on their journey to private cloud deployments. 

Today, resellers should be looking to packaged solutions for resale to these early adopters. We expect solutions such as backup and recovery, data storage, email archiving and data de-duplication to feature heavily over the coming months. This is because companies will require a much leaner, optimized infrastructure to take advantage of the cost savings and business performance benefits that public cloud computing offers.

Step 2: Hybrid clouds
Some companies will choose to adopt the hybrid cloud environment – a mixture of both private and public clouds. This will enable businesses to take advantage of the scalability and cost-effectiveness of public cloud computing while retaining control of mission-critical applications in-house.

Step 3: Taking advantage of public clouds
When organizations are ready to move to the public cloud environment they will look towards resellers who are able to provide business process consultancy on security, governance and data protection issues for the data centre. Ensuring the protection, confidentiality and availability of an organisation’s data is crucial. 

We would advise strongly that whichever ‘trusted cloud provider’ companies choose, they should make certain it is accountable. For resellers this means ensuring they put in place firm service level agreements and be willing to accommodate third party audits. This will give end-user companies the quality assurance they deserve and set a high level of service for what is still an emerging market.

Step 4: Community clouds
In future, we don’t foresee organizations navigating to the community cloud on their own. They will not have to seek out organizations that have similar requirements with which they can share infrastructure and gain the economies of scale, resellers will do the work for them. 

We expect to see a plethora of announcements about resellers partnering to provide data centre services for community clouds. These partnerships, whilst ensuring resellers receive an annuity stream, will provide organizations with more choices. 

Step 5: Service provision and developing applications
Just as customers demand elasticity in the cloud, resellers and solution providers need to be flexible. To offer just private cloud deployments will not be enough to survive in five years time. Resellers must have an eye on the future, including building their own data center cloud services for resale. Incidentally, these will provide them with a larger annuity stream. 

Also, resellers should consider utilizing “cloud application platforms” to develop their own data center applications. We anticipate smart resellers will grow their offerings through acquisition over the next few years. However, they will need to watch the market closely as services and applications for the cloud and data center will be driven by the customer not the reseller. 

One thing is for sure, cloud computing in whatever guise, will enable companies to save money by using the data center in a far more strategic and efficient way, while resellers will, of course, make money. Within the next two to three years cloud computing will enable organizations to reduce their capital expenditure significantly. On the other hand, competition will quickly spring up as entrepreneurs will be able to start up businesses with hardly any infrastructure at all. So, when making a choice about your IT infrastructure you should definitely ask yourself “will this decision exclude me from the cloud?” If the answer is yes – woe betide you.
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