The Cloud Problem

 

Why cloud isn't being adopted fast enough in IT Organizations:

Adopting enterprise-class public cloud services creates many challenges. Current public cloud providers have not addressed challenges such as strategic sourcing, vendor lock-in, service resilience, workload selection, availability and provider SLA compliance. In the case of private cloud, there are challenges of managing large initial investments, significant change in internal IT operations and support, and time to achieve technology capability. Due to the technical, cost, and security constraints, enterprises are more likely to adopt a hybrid (public and private) cloud solution. In this case, there is an increased need for a central cloud management solution to address challenges in both areas.

 

 

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IT organizations are rapidly moving towards a hybrid IT model where application workloads are placed between private and public cloud infrastructure. This drives a hybrid model across all aspects of IT management.

However, IT is currently not equipped to operate the hybrid model and is faced with acute problems that are hindering adoption of the cloud computing model. Current issues faced by IT include:

  • Lack of cloud business intelligence to predict, manage and govern the hybrid model and its benefits - Specifically capacity, cost, utilization and QoS
  • No sourcing and procurement processes to continuously size, prize and procure cloud services from multiple providers or private cloud platforms
  • No single interface to work the hybrid model for managing cloud technologies, utilization (metering), cost (control), QoS (SLA compliance)
  • Avoiding cloud technology platform and vendor lock in
  • No relationships and contracts in place with cloud service provider and IT VARs and SIs to consume and manage the cloud

 

As IT organizations start planning and implementing cloud projects, they will face different set of issues and challenges that are discussed below in detail.

 

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Complex planning scenarios Ineffective sourcing across many vendors Distributed technology architecture Crude governance controls
  • How do I model complex prediction scenarios for adopting private or public cloud services and achieving ROI, delivery, QoS, optimum utilization and cost goals?
  • How do I identify and track standard metrics for cloud service utilization, chargeback, and governance?
  • Is there a method to roadmap cloud initiatives, predict outcomes, establish governance metrics and policies from the start?
  • There are a large number of cloud services across IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS are being offered daily. How can I effectively source, track, and control costs?
  • How do I compare and select from so many different types of cloud service packages and pricing models?
  • How do I manage the complexity of multi-year/multi-provider contracts while controlling ongoing costs?
  • How do I avoid technology and vendor lock-in for my application deployment in the cloud?
  • Can I distribute and manage workloads as well as failover between public and private clouds and between multiple vendors?
  • How do I support different cloud application architectures from a provisioning, deployment, and porting perspectives?
  • Are there methods to automate the orchestration and management of change to application environments in the cloud?
  • Are there processes, policies, metrics, and data models to govern cloud environments for resource management, user provisioning, cost control, and compliance whether they are internal/outsourced, or public/private/hybrid?
  • Can we automate the controls and enforcement of compliance for cloud service usage, utilization, and cost?
  • How do I provide visibility into performance and compliance across the organization to continuously improve service performance?

 

Traditional IT approaches to solve the above challenges only add to further complexity, expense and rigidity. However, due to the abstraction layers available in the cloud and API automation, there is opportunity to standardize and enable centralized IT resource management and governance. This opportunity is being addressed by "cloud services brokers".

“The future of cloud computing will be permeated with the notion of brokers negotiating relationships between providers of cloud services and the service customers,” Gartner analyst L. Frank Kenney said in a statement. “In this context, a broker might be software, appliances, platforms or suites of technologies that enhance the base services available through the cloud. Enhancement will include managing access to these services, providing greater security or even creating completely new services.”

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