best practice guide How Cloudy is My IT Forecast?

Transcription

1 best practice guide How Cloudy is My IT Forecast?

2 Practical considerations for integrating on-premise and cloud environments to deliver the right outcomes for your business. Uptake of cloud accelerates, with some surprises There s no doubt that cloud is a reality for today s businesses. What s interesting, and sometimes surprising, is who s moving what to the cloud. Financial services, health care, education, and government organisations have been among the first to explore the benefits of cloud and some haven t been afraid to move core applications to a public cloud. SAP, initially deemed a poor fit, is one of the top cloud success stories.

3 Another perhaps unpredicted trend is that of business units, rather than IT teams, taking the initiative with cloud. Word on the street is that cloud is beneficial to business, so in many instances it s business that s demanding or buying cloud solutions, sometimes without involving the IT department, explains Kevin Leahy, General Manager Group Data Centre Business Unit at Dimension Data. Cloud is no longer an afterthought, or something that s vaguely linked to innovation. It s now an explicit need in tenders, and requests for proposals. Many organisations are looking for a hybrid IT solution of traditional infrastructure plus cloud. Organisations realise that cloud is an important part of their IT strategy but struggle to determine what that strategy should be and where to start, says Leahy. We recommend an approach that brings together business and IT to make the right decisions for future success. Cloud is no longer an afterthought, or something that s vaguely linked to innovation. It s now an explicit need in tenders, and requests for proposals. Step 1: Focus on business outcomes, not bits and bytes Stephen Green, Executive Nextgeneration Data Centres, Dimension Data Middle East and Africa, agrees. Our clients aren t talking about bits and bytes, but about how to move their applications to an environment that will be most responsive for both their own customers and internal stakeholders, he says. The conversations we re having are about taking essential workloads to the cloud, automating them, and delivering them in rich formats such as mobile, or via virtual workspaces. IT is there to enable the business, so the discussion must start with what the business needs to achieve. It s important to understand where growth will come from, what will drive that growth, and what the application portfolio will be. Cloud is a complex delivery mechanism that requires an understanding of the needs of the business, and how these will affect computing capacity for three to five years.

4 Step 2: Understand existing issues and processes Equally important is knowing what the current issues are in the business, and how IT can solve these. This is where a third party is helpful, says Samantha Wessels, Group Sales Director ITaaS Services Unit, Dimension Data. We often assist clients by acting as a bridge between business and IT, explaining how IT can help solve problems that people are experiencing in their daily work, she says. Another approach is to involve business analysts, as they understand the challenges of both IT and business. They can facilitate collaboration between the two, and often they re also strong advocates for cloud. Once you ve assessed your business s current needs and its desired future outcomes, it s also important to understand how internal processes will fit in with your IT strategy. If these processes are long and manual, then a move to cloud won t necessarily bring the anticipated benefits. Step 3: See the art of the possible Cloud has the potential to shrink the gap between what the business needs and what IT is able to deliver. A good example is testing and development which, when taken to the cloud, can reduce IT s expected delivery times from months to weeks, or even days. We re certainly not having discussions with our clients about whether cloud is a viable platform, says Green. Most organisations have seen the benefits but there are inhibitors, perceived and real, to adopting cloud solutions. According to Green, perceived inhibitors include technical challenges around availability, integrating networks and data centres, and issues like security and data sovereignty as organisations move portions of their data to a cloud platform. These, he contends, can be overcome if the cloud provider has the experience and skills to ask the right questions and find solutions. In his view, the real challenge is skills. Most organisations don t have the level of skills required to enable the applications, take them to the cloud, and manage the integration, he says. Organisations are struggling to make the shift from what was enterprise architecture a number of years ago, to modern frameworks and a converged value proposition in which my data centre becomes part of your cloud environment, and together we deliver applications into the business. A cloud partner that can bridge this gap can help you realise what Green terms the art of the possible. The way we do this is by building concept cars, he explains, pieces of software that showcase how a workload can be moved off an on-premise environment, virtual platform, or private cloud, and onto a public cloud, to reduce costs without affecting performance. This helps people see how they can unlock the capacity of the cloud. Cloud has the potential to shrink the gap between what the business needs and what IT is able to deliver.

5 Many organisations are bulging out of their data centres and have plans to build or lease the additional capacity they require... but cloud obviates that requirement.

6 Step 4: Test before you invest Don t underestimate the importance of assessing the maturity of the data centre and using this as both a starting point for assessing cloud readiness, and developing a roadmap to provide the additional capacity the business needs. You need to bring together the stable, virtualised environments with high utilisation and low rates of change, and environments that go through dynamic changes, and need instant updates and global delivery. Your IT roadmap should integrate onpremise and cloud environments, using an architectural approach. Many organisations are bulging out of their data centres and have plans to build or lease the additional capacity they require... but cloud obviates that requirement. Some businesses are now comfortable with reducing their footprint with the next data centre refresh buying at 60% capacity, for example, rather than 100%, and using the cloud for the additional 40% when it s required. The trick is accurately determining the impact of moving certain workloads to the cloud, and then taking storage space out of the equation to shrink your data centre footprint. The mistake of overplanning your data centre capacity is an expensive one, cautions Leahy. First, test what can be taken to the cloud, and how you can leverage your development and operations platforms to deliver those business outcomes. This is particularly pertinent to global organisations. You can have the best virtualised environment in your data centre, but if your consumers are in another country then cloud delivery needs to be faster, he says. Step 5: Don t be afraid to try! Organisations may approach the cloud with caution at first, then accelerate their adoption plans when they see results. A year ago, we started discussing cloud with a global manufacturer that was struggling with the asset life and consolidation of its data centres, says Leahy. Today, the organisation predicts that 70% of its IT environment will be in the cloud by He cites another example: an independent software vendor that predicted that 10% of its revenue would come from the cloud in a few years. It just two years, half its revenue was coming from cloud-based software. Even if you start small, start somewhere, advises Wessels. We re seeing clients all over the world take this approach, starting with testing and development, for example, and gaining the confidence to move on to other workloads. It s an exciting journey and the business benefits have been incredible. Working with a partner that can help you start applying various applications to the cloud will help you understand what to expect, and how to unlock the potential of these emerging, disruptive technologies, concludes Green. Organisations may approach the cloud with caution at first, then accelerate their adoption plans when they see results. CS / DDMS-1691 / 07/14 Copyright Dimension Data

7 Middle East & Africa Asia Australia Europe Americas Algeria Angola Botswana Congo Burundi Democratic Republic of the Congo Gabon Ghana Kenya Malawi Mauritius Morocco Mozambique Namibia Nigeria Oman Rwanda Saudi Arabia South Africa Tanzania Uganda United Arab Emirates Zambia China Hong Kong India Indonesia Japan Korea Malaysia New Zealand Philippines Singapore Taiwan Thailand Vietnam Australian Capital Territory New South Wales Queensland South Australia Victoria Western Australia Austria Belgium Czech Republic France Germany Hungary Italy Ireland Luxembourg Netherlands Poland Portugal Slovakia Spain Switzerland Turkey United Kingdom Brazil Canada Chile Mexico United States For contact details in your region please visit