Cloud Benefits Elusive for CMOs Charged with Harnessing Big Data

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1 Cloud Benefits Elusive for CMOs Charged with Harnessing Big Data Until Now A publication by:

2 Introduction The analysts at Gartner made waves when they predicted that, by 2017, chief marketing officers would be spending more on IT than chief technology officers. What was behind the prediction? Primarily, the phenomena that have transformed virtually all industries in recent years: Big Data, new capabilities for real-time analytics and the rise of mobile computing. Along the way, the CMO s operation has changed from cost center specializing in soft skills to critical revenue driver that promotes the brand through precise, data-driven efforts to measure, predict and engage customer needs. CEOs demand that their companies be able to quickly set up applications that survey customers, nurture sales prospects or conduct other research to solve business problems. Such sophisticated efforts require speedy innovation, agility and unlimited scalability available only in the cloud. However, as CMOs have found, achieving all those benefits without busting the budget has proven a great challenge. Efforts to implement private cloud solutions for brands inevitably run into lengthy delays, cost overruns or security concerns. Companies also can find themselves locked into a legacy vendor s arrangement and thus subjected to price hikes, product delays and other issues. There also are the surprise bills that pop up when a rogue element, frustrated by the slow rollout of private clouds, simply acquires its own public cloud space. It all adds up, ultimately, to loss of budget control. 2

3 Introduction (cont.) CMO organizations also are challenged to orchestrate the various cloud solutions they need in various cloud contexts in private clouds that stay within the organization, in public clouds that are open to customers and in hybrid clouds that connect to third-party providers play well together. To date, the tools needed to help CMOs pull all that off have simply not been available, and true business value has been hard to achieve. Legacy vendors offered an assemblage of bolt-on or stitched-together solutions, none of which did the complete job, as Gartner has noted. All that has changed now. Connectloud s ucloud platform, based on open-source, hardware-agnostic technology, empowers brands to implement secure, private clouds in a fraction of the time required by other vendors. And no matter what number or type of clouds your brand needs to answer business problems, ucloud offers the same flexibility as Amazon Web Services in a safe, highlyavailable environment for creating and testing new applications, services and virtual machines. It s true Commodity Cloud. 3

4 The problem The chief marketing officer, as the person responsible for protecting and promoting the company brand, needs the ability to very quickly set up applications that solve enterprise problems and expand the brand s reputation in a positive light. That might mean hosting massive CRM projects, surveys, customer ratings or other Big Data analysis and research. When such opportunities arise, he can t wait months for cloud capacity. He needs it now, he needs it affordably and he needs solutions to be secure from corporate espionage. The CMO is aware of both the strengths and weaknesses of his company s products. He s promoting the strengths and finding solutions to mitigate the weaknesses. 4

5 The problem (cont.) The marketing chief, for example, might need to quickly and easily set up a cloud application for an advertising campaign. Or, maybe he needs to run an analysis for why certain products will cost customers more. Or, perhaps a car company needs to determine if certain clientele are willing to pay more for certain products or features such as adaptive cruise control. The CMO must also keep the company brand safe from prying eyes, meaning the ratings and analysis he does as part of brand positioning can t compromise trade secrets to rivals. They need to know that security is robust, and that authentication spans many clouds. In many industries, but especially in retail, speed and uptime performance is paramount. Brands can easily suffer harm if apps crater during a holiday rush. It s no wonder that CMOs, like their employers, have been slow to migrate their needs to the cloud. To date, the costs and the risks involved have simply been too high. 5

6 The problem (cont.) Machine-oriented Architect it Manual provisioning Design it Hard to control utilization High provisioning & ops cost Where can we put it? Extended provisioning time Procure it Configuration risk Install it Applications owners going direct to AWS Configure it Current cloud space & IT problem Manual Secure it Is it ready? End-to-End Implementation Time: 6+ Months The ucloud solution In-house AWS with real SDN capabilities Architect it Self-service; automated provisioning Elasticity (capacity-on-demand) Design it Optimized provisioning & ops cost Rapid provisioning Increased Resiliency and Availability Service-oriented Where can we put it? Procure it Connectloud Solution Automated Self-Service On-Demand Install it Configure it Secure it Is it ready? Local AWS established End-to-End Implementation Time: Minutes 6

7 The ucloud solution Faster standup time. The ucloud Cloud Management Platform cuts deployment time for private clouds from months to between 30 to 45 days, depending on hardware provisioning. Legacy providers, meanwhile, require six or nine months and sometimes longer to implement a private cloud. Our software gets switches, firewalls and routers up and running quickly, stiches these virtual machines together to make a private cloud strong and secure, and then helps scale your broad cloud environment. Using a locked-down, repeatable process, we tackle large deployments in a standardized, structured way. We can deploy your cloud faster in large part because of our architecture, which encrypts access to your data without touching the underlying information. The net result: No delays from testing data for cloud deployments, as other architectures require. Ease of use. The ucloud self-service user interface lets you get clouds up and running within minutes after the hardware comes online. Our software handles the provisioning, while role-based administrators supply the control and security. Tenant administrators can easily and efficiently deploy clouds and decide who in their organizations get access to what areas of those clouds. 7

8 The ucloud solution (cont.) Transparency. Marketing chiefs get a clear view of all costs originating from their virtualized infrastructure, along with data on how much of that infrastructure they re using at a given time and how many applications have been deployed on top of it. That can help the CMO predict future IT-related costs, such as when and how much additional hardware they will need to acquire. Overall, the CMO may see lower operating and capital costs. Control. CMOs can monitor clouds through an intuitive dashboard and track all services they re using, along with finding trouble spots and determining how they can be fixed. The marketing chief also can set up brand-specific clouds containing different applications that serve various needs. User administrators can quickly both launch or shut down virtual applications, devices and machines to control costs. 8

9 The ucloud solution (cont.) Subscription Model. The CMO can use Connectloud without fear of vendor lock-in because we lease our technology. You pay as you go, based on how many virtual machines you use. You pay only for what you need, scaling and shrinking capacity as circumstances warrant. Lower Costs. Cut your operating and capital costs for your cloud environment. We use open-source software, which costs less, and we automate jobs that currently must be handled by staff resources. Security. ucloud never touches your data, so the platform is natively compliant with regulations from HIPAA to Sarbanes-Oxley and provides an extra layer of security for your customers. You can manage multiple clouds from a single point of control, cutting down on the human touches required and, thus, increasing security. ucloud also encrypts the operating commands on multiple levels. Agility. The ucloud platform can simultaneously run and manage public, private and hybrid clouds so you can have as much or as little capacity as you need at any moment. Growing or shrinking your cloud can happen in minutes. Our software works with any cloud provider, helping you avoid vendor lock-in, and with any hardware. In short, no management platform offers more complete control over your cloud environment than ucloud. 9

10 The ucloud solution (cont.) Intuitive multitenancy. ucloud provides organizations with adjustable pools of resources and simplified tools that allow creation of customized clouds to support any number of campaigns. That allows enterprises to segregate campaigns within their pools while ensuring security of each dataset. Resources can be expanded or contracted on demand in only minutes, and they can all be controlled from a single point that is encrypted on multiple levels. Conclusion With the pressure growing on CMOs to translate Big Data into business results, our ucloud platform can help you unlock the power of the cloud. The software will help you cut the operating and capital costs of IT infrastructure while providing the elasticity of limitless capacity and computing power. It s the realization of true Commodity Cloud, delivered in the security and performance of a private environment. Let us know how we can help. 10

11 Contact us today for a free demo! Connectloud 1100 Jupiter Road, Suite #110 Plano, TX Phone: (888) sales@connectloud.com 11