Cloud represents the biggest technology disruption since the transition from mainframe to client-server computing and is transforming the way that businesses and consumers are experiencing technology. Yet, despite attracting so much interest in the IT marketplace, the concept still generates a lot of misinformation. As we move from the PC era to the cloud era, an increasing number of businesses are looking to cloud as a way to transform service delivery and empower the workforce. In order to harness the technology to its full effect, it’s important for these organisations to cut through the noise and understand what the cloud is and, more importantly, what it is not. Arthur Dell, director technology and service, Citrix, discusses some cloud misconceptions and the facts behind the myths. Contact him on arthur.dell@citrix.com
Arthur Dell, Citrix
Is cloud a place?
Some businesses talk about “moving to the cloud” in the same way they would talk about moving house or to another city. But rather than think about it in physical terms, the cloud can be anywhere – your data centre, or someone else’s. Simply put, it’s a more agile and efficient method of delivering, consuming and adopting IT services.
Do cloud users get locked into a particular solution?
It’s about openness and open source for choice and flexibility. Businesses don’t need to be locked into single, proprietary, all-in-one solutions, but should instead have the flexibility and freedom to choose the best virtualisation, networking, storage solutions and hardware for their requirements. An open, no lock-in architecture allows businesses to run multiple hypervisors, adopt different networking and storage topologies and support industry standards such as Amazon Web Services API.
Are we talking about server virtualisation?
It’s a new breed of purpose-built cloud architectures. Although server virtualisation can be an important ingredient in a cloud, it’s not a required component. Some of the leading cloud organisations have implemented massive cloud deployments without it. Take Google, for example, which deployed a cloud architecture that does not use server virtualisation, but rather a bare-metal infrastructure. So, while cloud is not server virtualisation, it is a new way to provision, manage and orchestrate infrastructure resources across a data centre.
Does one have to choose between public and private cloud?
It’s a holistic strategy that spans and connects private and public clouds. Many businesses feel they must make an either/or decision when it comes to the choice of public or private clouds. The right cloud strategy enables a hybrid approach that selects the best of public and private cloud technologies, while still providing the business with full interconnectivity, access and flexibility.
Is cloud driven top-down?
It’s being driven from the bottom up by innovative and agile users. Cloud has transformed traditional, rigid approaches to IT service delivery, with individual business units leading the charge and taking the initiative to implement cloud architectures.This is why the cloud revolution is so powerful and the consumerisation of IT is facilitating the movement. Users are already there and many C-Level executives are now trying to catch up. Those that embrace the cloud sooner rather than later will gain increased business agility and innovation before competitors do.
Some organisations are still struggling to get to grips with ‘the cloud’ and the benefits it can deliver. But the cloud is real, it’s ready now and is not necessarily what many think it is. Many businesses have learned exactly what the cloud is and have successfullyput the technology to the test.
Is end-to-end security realistic?
Moving workloads to the cloud over simple Internet connectivity with unproven security opens new, often unprotected entry points to your network. To protect your enterprise assets in transit, prevent threats from entering your enterprise network, and support compliance, you’ve got to ensure complete security for data in motion. One key measure is to go beyond the basic VPNs offered by most cloud protection and apply advanced encryption to protect your content as it moves between the enterprise and the cloud.. Optimised application delivery
The agility of the cloud doesn’t do you much good if it compromises performance, making it impossible to meet your SLAs or keep your users productive. Techniques like TCP optimisation, compression and data deduplication can help you maintain acceptable performance across WAN links.
What about deep application visibility?
Hybrid cloud environments can make it more difficult to maintain, manage and control enterprise applications effectively. To support your business effectively, you need to be able to maintain deep visibility into how your applications are being used no matter how complex and dynamic they become. Application-level visibility and monitoring will help you find and fix problems more quickly as they emerge, and capture business intelligence to guide your strategy.
Is on-demand provisioning possible?
Third-party clouds can be a valuable source of on-demand resources for people throughout your organisation to help them meet time-sensitive or temporary needs. First, though, you’ve got to give them a simple way to tap into the cloud services they need, when they need them. By using L2 bridging to make the cloud network a natural extension of your own L2 network, you can make it easy to shift workloads to the cloud without having to re-architect applications.
