By Charles F Moreira
We are beginning to see companies implement private instances of a public cloud, in which the cloud service provider installs its gear at a client site and manages it remotely, according to Ken Male, founder and managing director of TheInfoPro, a service of 451 Research.
The client pays a unit cost for the service provided and is assured an SLA (level of service). Over time, as regulatory compliance and security can be ensured, these private instances have the ability to move outside a company-owned data centre. The end of the decade is a logical time frame.
This is somewhat similar to an electricity utility such as Tenaga Nasional placing an electrical sub-station in a customer’s premises, such as in a large building, an industrial plant and so on, and it tends to address security, data privacy, regulatory and other such concerns customers have with hosting their data on third party facilities.
“As we look out to the end of the decade, our research depicts an information technology organisation being transformed and an infrastructure undergoing major structural changes,” said Male.
On the organisation side, one trend is for IT to become more embedded in the business units as the enabler, and in some ways, a broker of services that will be delivered: on premise via company-owned IT and intellectual property, and the various “as a service” offerings that will be internal and external in delivery mode. Setting policy and governance and ensuring security will be the DNA of IT as this transition occurs.
On the infrastructure side, virtualisation has been the catalyst for a generational change in how IT is delivered. We are at the advent of the “Industrialization of IT,” with the goal being to standardize and drive down the cost of servers, storage and networking gear. Delivering a “unit of compute” as cost-efficiently as possible in a standard, modular and portable manner is the charter.
Some would call this commoditisation, and when we look at what businesses like Amazon are able to deliver, we agree. This transformation enables the use of Software Defined Networks and Software Defined Storage.
Virtualisation enables abstraction and high utilisation of this industrialized IT plant, acting as a gateway to the internal cloud. Managing the environment; providing functionality like charge-backs based on utilisation; prioritising performance based on SLAs that IT provides to the business unit or app owner; and implementing cloud orchestration stacks will be key aspects of IT in 2020.
The concept of intelligent workload management is what IT will need to be delivering, where location of the workload can be anywhere.
The old issue from the 1980s, the problem with “Silos of IT” rendering isolation and lack of interoperability, is a key to be prepared for. As we look at private cloud, SaaS, IaaS, PaaS, the role of the CIO will be to ensure integration, accessibility, and security of the mission-critical applications and data.
Ken Male, who has more than 25 years of experience in the IT industry, created TheInfoPro to provide customers with insight based on one-on-one and in-depth interviews with a proprietary network of the world’s largest buyers and users of IT. TheInfoPro was acquired in 2011 by The 451 Group, a syndicated research, advisory and professional services firm.
Major disruptive force
Cloud computing has emerged as a major disruptive force for both IT vendors and users. It is still very early days, and 2013 will see cloud computing continue to evolve rapidly as vendors and enterprises get to grips with the opportunities and challenges that it represents, according to OVUM’s Laurent Lachal.
Cloud computing promises to tackles two hitherto irreconcilable IT challenges: the need to reduce costs and the need to boost innovation. It takes a lot of effort from vendors and enterprises to actually make it work, but making it work they will do in 2013, both on their own and as part of increasingly complex ecosystems.
In essence:-
*Barely adolescent, cloud computing is an increasingly crucial IT and business enabler.
*Enterprises continue to slowly come to terms with cloud computing.
*Vendors experience the same issues as users but on a larger scale.
*The public sector is increasingly focusing on its economy manager role.
*Cloud computing ecosystems are emerging.
*Data is the new cloud computing oil.
Debate settled
The debate on cloud services’ place in enterprise IT is settled, says Ovum’s John Madden.
Cloud is now largely viewed by enterprise customers as an additional path to outsourcing and service delivery. However, customers have many lingering questions on just how extensively and for what functions cloud services should be deployed.
“Moving into 2013, such decisions will be influenced by trends, including the growing connection between cloud, mobility, and data; cloud services governance and integration; and continuing development of cloud ecosystems among vendors,” said Madden.
Whether they like it or not, enterprise customers must consider cloud as part of the future state of their corporate IT. For many customers, the drumbeat around cloud’s promise of more predictable IT operating costs, decreased capital spending, and increased flexibility is simply too loud to ignore.
Going into 2013, our survey data (as detailed in our Ovum Cloud Services Business Trends Survey) indicates that overall cloud services investment will accelerate, with software-as-a-service (SaaS) deployments slightly outpacing investment in infrastructure- and platform-as-s-service (IaaS and PaaS) deployments.
In addition, private cloud will remain the preferred cloud services deployment model over public and hybrid deployments, although customers’ attitudes toward the latter continue to evolve.
While cost remains a driving factor for many cloud services investments, some customers are beginning to consider cloud more strategically, in terms of what it could mean for improving business processes, entering new markets and geographies, and increasing overall business efficiency.
“A small but measurable shift is occurring in viewing cloud services as less tactical and more strategic, and we expect the strategic potential of cloud to take on even greater importance throughout 2013,” said Madden.
Discussions around cloud services will move beyond simply whether to adopt a point IaaS, SaaS, or PaaS service. Instead, cloud will envelop other emerging trends to the point where any consideration of cloud services will include a “nexus” of cloud, mobility, and data (business intelligence, data management, and analytics).
Indeed, many IT services and outsourcing vendors are already connecting these trends in their cloud services go-to-market efforts, although when you dive into each provider’s individual portfolios, few have a full set of capabilities in each area. In addition, vendors are wrapping this nexus in a casing of security services in order to meet various compliance requirements within vertical industries.
Using cloud services more strategically has implications for how they are managed, governed, and ultimately integrated with existing IT assets and other cloud services.
“These issues are increasingly important if customers want to move beyond private cloud and embrace a hybrid model where they can access an orchestrated set of services in traditional, private, and public cloud environments. Our survey data indicates that customers that have invested or are considering investing in cloud services need,” Madden added.
Containing storage costs
Public cloud storage and flash memory help address growing storage challenges, according to Ovum’s Tim Stammers. As data volumes continue to balloon, businesses must be aware of the trends in storage technology in order to contain or limit growing storage costs.
The amount of data stored by organisations is increasing, both in terms of the hardware capacity required and the drain on resources. It will continue to force storage on to the investment agenda and will require IT management to look at new technology and approaches.
Data storage can no longer be ignored or put on the back burner by simply buying more capacity. In 2013, organizations need to address the growing disparity between storage capabilities and the requirement for greater capacity and flexibility.
Public cloud storage is emerging as part of the solution to these issues. Because of network latencies, cloud storage will never fully replace on-premise storage, to which it will always be a complement. However, as data volumes continue to increase, and increasing numbers of businesses decide to store data for indefinite periods of time, it is only a matter of time before the clouds become a commonplace home for business data. The market has not yet reached a tipping point, but all the indicators continue to point upward.
Architecturally, flash memory is at the opposite end of the scale to public cloud storage, but it is already widely deployed in data centres, and is continuing to change storage systems. The number of options for using flash in data centres is growing, and the technology could be a disruptive force that could unseat some storage incumbents if they do not move quickly enough to embrace it.
The bottom line:-
*Storage is an important component of the IT infrastructure.
*Public cloud storage is gaining momentum.
*Flash memory is reshaping enterprise storage.
