Tips for corporate CIOs on cloud computing

The speed of cloud computing has allowed many companies to invest in large quantities, but prudent planning is essential if companies want to develop public cloud infrastructure. In a recent report by Gartner analysts, the market for infrastructure as a service (IaaS) is immature, the market is only providing the only service, and the pace of evolution is fairly rapid, and selection providers must be cautious.

For the enterprise, the first choice is usually the previous cooperation record of the vendors, but before the selection, some issues need to be considered by the enterprise, such as the Connecticut State Wethersfield City Online health care transactions and information exchange Post-n-track, These two are migrating to cloud computing for stability and flexibility. Randy Ullo, vice president of Post-n-track Technology, said his company found that its hosting service provider NaviSite was building a cloud infrastructure, so the company began investigating how they implemented cloud services and quickly considered the possibilities. At the same time Randy Ullo also said that although NaviSite and Post-n-track have had a good history of cooperation, but also can not ensure that the company presumed Post-n-track cloud business. "We didn't let go until we learned about the physical cloud structure of NaviSite, and decided to take further action." These physical cloud architectures include the underlying CPU, storage structure, and the upper layers of software and management. "Ulloa said.

In the process of migrating to IaaS, some IT managers first looked at Amazon EC2. The CIO Doug Menefee of Schumacher Group is one of them. Although the SaaS (software as service) model has been used to run its 85% business processes, the Schumacher group has only recently tested the water IaaS. Menefee said the reason for the company's doing so was an internal data center failure that had been encountered during the Christmas season. "This fault has sounded the alarm for us. After learning about the level of service maturity such as Amazon EC2, we decided to choose an external cloud service provider. By using them to provide the infrastructure for the data that we don't have in our own data center. "Menefee said.

Can manage IaaS

For some users, IaaS means being able to carve out a private space in the public cloud infrastructure. They get many of the same benefits as using pure IaaS, such as availability, cost, and scalability. But there are no security issues associated with sharing the infrastructure with others. Others like the concept of cloud IaaS, and they want full control over self-service models.

James Staten, a Forrester Analytics analyst, points out that many companies, like the Post-n-track, are expected to use outsourced companies and hosting providers to provide management services to achieve certain it comfort. There are three forms of manageable iaas. If you are using services from outsourced companies such as Accenture, Gemini, or IBM, continuing to use them for IaaS management may be the easiest, most thorough, and time-saving option. Because it already understands your system, your application, and the SLAs you care about (service level agreements). "Staten said.

However, you must ensure that the expertise of the outsourced service provider matches your preferred IaaS. "Many of these contractors have had cloud practices, at least to manage the Amazon cloud," Staten warns. But they have to prove that they have the experience of managing the cloud infrastructure you will be using. The Manage load

The second option for enterprise users is to choose to develop the cloud infrastructure and have a traditional hosting company that helps you manage your operating system, applications, and anything you want him to help you manage. Such IaaS providers include At&t, Fujitsu, Gogrid, HP, IBM, NaviSite, Rackspace, SoftLayer, SunGard, and Verizon Business (which includes Terremark).

"When you decide to use a cloud in a company, you don't have to value its portability, and you don't have to value it for more than one cloud," Staten said. The company's professionalism is limited by the cloud it owns, but those advisers may know better what the cloud can do because they are closer to those who build the cloud. ”

"Data Center Hosting + Cloud" (Host-cum-cloud) 's IaaS vendor model is best suited to his company, says Jim Dunlap, the SaaS provider Cycle30 Company president. When the cycle 30 team received permission to create a subsidiary, they decided not to use "valuable money" to build their own data centers, but instead to work with traditional hosting companies SunGard. "This gives us the opportunity to understand our business model and determine whether we can take advantage of cloud computing to reduce the cost of entering the market," Dunlap said. ””

According to the introduction, "CYCLE30 company urgently need to put our specifications and need to replicate the system process to provide sungard for testing, and told them must be enabled within a week 25 to 50 new environments." Cycle30 plans to use cloud computing facilities for 6-9 months, when providers must shut down their cloud-computing infrastructure, and businesses will no longer pay for them. Currently, SunGard's managed cloud services have taken over all of Cycle30 's projects.

Pure Cloud

Staten points out that the third option for IaaS management is pure cloud managers like cloudscaling. "What customers buy is 100% of pure cloud expertise," he said. Pure cloud managers know how best to take advantage of the unique characteristics of the cloud and cloud environments. "The difference between a Gemini service and a cloudscaling service is that the former treats the cloud from an enterprise perspective and therefore manages the cloud from an operational perspective." The latter first considers the cloud and therefore has an application design perspective. "Therefore, pure cloud providers can put things in the cloud, plan to help you reduce cloud costs, improve the usability of your application, and suggest you modify the application design to achieve better cloud economy." "Staten said.

For example, through such a provider, you can give an application to Amazon EC2 or another cloud, and then let its consultant manage it for you. "They can adjust the deployment of your applications and applications, push it to multiple locations, and do a lot of things that you don't know how to do." You may not even know that you can do such things in the cloud. "Staten said.

Cloud IaaS Service (Cloud IaaS Services) is becoming a viable option for enterprise IT deployments. In some real-world cases, cloud IaaS services provide a good foundation for starting points. In other cases, it enables rapid activation and termination, and provides a business-oriented infrastructure. Of course, it's also important to note that you must work with your preferred provider to develop a high-availability disaster recovery plan. This is also a lesson from the recent Amazon EC2 accident.