Top Ten Reasons to Transition Your IT Sandbox Environments to the Cloud

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1 Top Ten Reasons to Transition Your IT Sandbox Environments to the Cloud WHITE PAPER BROUGHT TO YOU BY SKYTAP

2 2 Top Ten Reasons to Transition Your IT Sandbox Environments to the Cloud Contents Executive Summary Eliminate infrastructure constraints on the business Avoid expensive application rewrites Reduce data center cost and complexity Enable global team collaboration with shared cloud infrastructure Slash provisioning time with a self-service model Reduce the time to replicate and resolve bugs Reduce server sprawl Create pre-production environments to test the impact of production changes Allow IT operations teams to focus on and optimize the production environment Maintain policy management and control costs Summary About Skytap... 17

3 3 Top Ten Reasons to Transition Your IT Sandbox Environments to the Cloud Executive Summary Many organizations are evaluating cloud infrastructure as part of their IT strategy and portfolio of services. The benefits of cloud computing are compelling: vastly reduced IT operational effort, reduced costs and the ability to scale infrastructure up and down according to business needs. While intrigued by the benefits, business and IT managers are faced with two practical questions: Where should I start? How do I realize benefits quickly? IT sandbox environments are among the top of the list for cloud computing. In many companies, IT sandbox environments are provisioned for dynamic workloads. Examples include migration and software evaluation environments, security testing, pre-production test beds, training and IT labs, among others. However, IT sandbox environments are not well suited to serve with capital intensive in-house data center resources. Unlike well planned data center workloads, these dynamic workloads have frequently fluctuating capacity needs, rapid changes, and often require a lot of tactical IT support. These characteristics make them smart candidates to transition to a cloud environment.

4 4 Top Ten Reasons to Transition Your IT Sandbox Environments to the Cloud Fig. 1 Dynamic workloads are ideal for cloud computing. These types of environments not only provide a low-risk adoption path to the cloud, but can also provide a high ROI, since resource utilization can be aligned with demand and users can be empowered with self-service, thereby reducing costs and IT support burden considerably.

5 5 Top Ten Reasons to Transition Your IT Sandbox Environments to the Cloud Top ten reasons and benefits of transitioning IT Sandbox environments to the cloud By moving their IT sandbox to the cloud, IT managers can: 1. Eliminate infrastructure constraints on the business 2. Avoid expensive application rewrites 3. Reduce data center cost and complexity 4. Enable global team collaboration with shared virtual infrastructure 5. Slash provisioning time with a self-service model 6. Reduce the time to replicate and resolve bugs 7. Reduce server sprawl 8. Create pre-production environments to test the impact of production changes 9. Allow IT operations teams to focus on and optimize the production environment 10. Maintain policy management and control costs

6 6 Top Ten Reasons to Transition Your IT Sandbox Environments to the Cloud 1. Eliminate infrastructure constraints on the business Business Challenge: Too often, the lead time and costs of provisioning infrastructure impact an IT organization s ability to deliver on business needs. Demand is often incredibly dynamic, while capacity tends to grow in chunk-sized increments. For dynamic environments, demand often outstrips capacity and IT is constantly working to catch up and get ahead of the curve. How can IT meet the needs of dynamic workloads quickly and cost effectively? Fig. 2 Dynamic workload profile in typical enterprise data centers. Cloud strategy: The availability of on-demand virtual infrastructure removes constraints on the IT organization. A cloud service enables infrastructure capacity to be added quickly to meet business demand, often in less than a day. Costs are reduced because cloud services are provided using a utility billing model, so you only pay for what you use. Net result: Capacity when you need it at a lower cost than on-premise set-up.

7 7 Top Ten Reasons to Transition Your IT Sandbox Environments to the Cloud 2. Avoid expensive application rewrites Business Challenge: Some cloud platforms require applications to be rewritten to take advantage of proprietary application frameworks or storage services. The range of supported operating systems, databases, and infrastructure tools often makes it challenging to replace existing IT lab environments with these cloud solutions. How can IT leverage the benefits of cloud computing without expensive and timeconsuming application re-writes? Fig. 3 Existing applications running in Skytap. Cloud strategy: Ensure your cloud provider supports a wide variety of operating systems, databases, application servers and infrastructure tools. Skytap uses industry standard virtual infrastructure and supports leading hypervisors and operating systems, enabling organizations to run their existing application architectures without modification. In addition, Skytap provides advanced virtual private networking to allow secure, seamless connectivity to in-house systems. Machines can keep the same networking settings and hostnames and connect to onsite infrastructure as required. This enables IT and development teams to use a cloud service as an extension of their onsite IT environment and run their existing applications, virtual machines and systems unchanged in the cloud. Net result: Rapid migration without costly application changes and re-writes.

8 8 Top Ten Reasons to Transition Your IT Sandbox Environments to the Cloud 3. Reduce data center cost and complexity Business Challenge: In-house data centers are typically large capital intensive investments. Physical space, hardware, networking and storage subsystems are just the start. The cost of implementation and administration can be up to 5X initial hardware costs. While these investments are necessary and appropriate to support core IT production workloads, the costs can be excessive to support dynamic workloads. Many times servers are underutilized and not easily redeployed, resulting in costly inefficiencies. How can IT adequately and efficiently support dynamic workloads without breaking the bank? Fig. 4 Total cost of ownership illustration. Cloud strategy: Using the cloud for dynamic workloads is ideal given that these environments have highly varying utilization parameters. Cloud services are generally billed on a variable, pay-asyou-use model, so an organization can convert large upfront capital expenditures into needs-based operational expenses. Savings can be immediate. In addition, by aligning computing capacity with demand, on-going support costs are minimized. Quotas can also be applied to individuals and organizations to cap usage and/or hard budget. Net result: Total cost of ownership can be reduced 70% or more vs. in-house data centers, with less complexity to boot.

9 9 Top Ten Reasons to Transition Your IT Sandbox Environments to the Cloud 4. Enable global team collaboration with shared virtual infrastructure Business Challenge: Most IT organizations now have a collaborative relationship with an outside service provider for design, development and testing purposes. It is common for business analysts and application development teams to be in one location and testing teams to be located in a different remote location or country such as India or China. Using multiple infrastructures for development and testing in each location compounds the challenges related to distance and time. Further, scaling multiple machines in two discrete environments can be very costly. How can geographicallydispersed teams collaborate more effectively without duplicating IT infrastructure and costs? Fig. 5 Global collaboration example using Skytap s Groups, Projects, and Roles feature. Cloud strategy: Using a cloud service for test environments enables disparate teams to work on the same virtual infrastructure. Developers and testers can collaborate on the same virtual machines in real time over the Web to resolve problems. Shared virtual infrastructure not only simplifies administration, but also reduces the time associated with issues caused by different environmental and configurations settings. Net result: More effective collaboration, faster cycle times, simpler administration.

10 10 Top Ten Reasons to Transition Your IT Sandbox Environments to the Cloud 5. Slash provisioning time with a selfservice model Business Challenge: Highly dynamic workloads require constant set-up and tear-down of multimachine environments. This can translate into long delays for IT operations or test teams. A shortage of infrastructure can also result in several weeks or months delay while hardware is ordered, delivered, configured and installed. How can IT avoid delays and inefficiencies related to provisioning and scaling infrastructure? App Dev Test ERP Migration... Virtual Training Software Demo GLOBAL USERS SELF-SERVICE SOLUTIONS Secure Web Connection CLOUD AUTOMATION IT ADMINISTRATION CLOUD INFRASTRUCTURE Fig. 6 Self-service leverages the speed and scalability of the cloud while maintaining security and control. Cloud strategy: Leading cloud service providers offer a self-service Web portal so IT operations and QA professionals can deploy environments without involving an IT administrator. This dramatically decreases provisioning times and increases productivity. Net result: Eliminate delays related to infrastructure provisioning.

11 11 Top Ten Reasons to Transition Your IT Sandbox Environments to the Cloud 6. Reduce the time to replicate and resolve bugs Business Challenge: Testing is one of the most important and time consuming steps in software development and maintenance. A typical application development team spends over 25% of their time on environment configuration and bug reproduction. Even with this investment in time, developers may not be able to reproduce an issue due to platform and environmental differences, and the bug is left unresolved. What can IT do to reduce the time to resolve bugs that could impact software stability, performance, and schedules? Fig. 7 Recreate customer use cases for faster bug resolution. Cloud strategy: Skytap s suspend and snapshot capabilities enable developers and testers to save hours of unnecessary time resolving software bugs. Entire multi-machine systems can be suspended at the point of failure within virtual data centers. A tester can check in the virtual machine configuration to a shared library and attach a Web URL to a defect report that points to the configuration. It s then quick and easy for a developer to bring up the entire application stack at the point of failure and debug the issue. For customer-specific issues, support engineers can easily create identical environments, reproducing product and performance issues, snap-shotting entire configurations, and then sharing them with test and development teams across the globe for deeper inspection. Net result: Better software and shorter QA and development cycles.

12 12 Top Ten Reasons to Transition Your IT Sandbox Environments to the Cloud 7. Reduce server sprawl Business Challenge: Server sprawl is a common problem reported by IT administrators. Servers that are kept under desks or left in lab environments are usually underutilized and unavailable to others. Creating a common pool of virtualized machines and sharing these resources is now considered a best practice approach to reducing server sprawl. However, many organizations report new problems of virtual machine sprawl. Once hardware is centralized in a common pool, virtual machines become difficult to manage and track. Different individuals or groups may create virtual machines that are not easily identified and it becomes difficult to know when to decommission virtual machines. How can IT managers leverage the benefits of virtual machine sharing while simultaneously controlling costs and sprawl? Cloud strategy: Skytap solves server sprawl by providing a configuration library to manage, track and deploy virtual machines. Users can easily discover virtual machine configurations, create copies and start them in the lab through a self-service Web interface. Virtual machines that have been left running can be set to suspend after a period of time to save costs and reduce infrastructure usage. Importantly, quotas can be applied to individual users and organizations to cap usage, providing high levels of control and visibility for IT administrators. Net result: More control, less sprawl.

13 13 Top Ten Reasons to Transition Your IT Sandbox Environments to the Cloud 8. Create pre-production environments to test the impact of production changes Business Challenge: More often than not, an IT organization doesn t have a pre-production environment to test software updates. Often the low utilization and high cost of maintaining a second environment is prohibitive. Further, many production updates are minor change requests to a wide range of existing business applications, so maintaining static pre-production environments for all these applications is not cost effective. Finally, replicating the network settings of a production environment is often difficult as the pre-production environment resides on the same network. How can IT leverage the cloud to cost effectively test software before rolling it into production? Fig. 8 Standardize and simplify IT sandbox provisioning with Skytap s cloud library & templates. Cloud strategy: IT operations and test teams can create pre-production environments and check them into a configuration library in a virtual data center. It is possible to create configurations with multiple networks, add multiple network adaptors to each virtual machine, connect them to different networks, and then configure routing policies. This ensures IT sandbox users have access to production-like environments in the cloud. When a change needs to be tested, an IT professional or tester can deploy the environment, ensure network settings are replicated by using network fencing, and test updates before rolling into production. Once the test is complete the virtual infrastructure is released back to the shared pool for other users. Net result: Software updates and application changes can be safely and thoroughly tested before releasing to production environments.

14 14 Top Ten Reasons to Transition Your IT Sandbox Environments to the Cloud 9. Allow IT operations teams to focus on and optimize the production environment Business Challenge: IT professionals responsible for infrastructure provisioning will often say lab environments are 30% of the IT footprint but 70% of the work. The dynamic workload nature of development, QA, IT ops testing, software training and demo environments requires IT operations teams to spend time and resources provisioning, setting-up, and tearing-down environments at the expense of core production activities. How can IT focus on core production activities and not get distracted supporting dynamic workloads? Cloud strategy: Adopting a cloud service for dynamic workloads relieves distractions and frees up IT resources to focus on core production systems rather than spending cycles on lab environments. Skytap includes simple, powerful networking technology that enables cloud infrastructure to easily connect with on-site infrastructure. IT operations teams can still control access and security to the cloud environment, but no longer need to spend excessive time or resources on provisioning requests and lab administration. Net result: Less time on IT support tickets, more focus on production environments.

15 15 Top Ten Reasons to Transition Your IT Sandbox Environments to the Cloud 10. Maintain policy management and control costs Business Challenge: Most IT organizations have policies and procedures to ensure security and manage costs, among many other functions. Executing and enforcing these controls is not always straightforward in the cloud. Many cloud infrastructure-as-a-service providers do not offer advanced control capabilities or the ability to isolate usage to internal groups for charge-back. In many cases, IT policies need to be implemented manually as well, a cumbersome and time-consuming task. How can IT easily enforce enterprise policies, ensure costs are kept under control, and enable chargeback billing in a cloud environment? Fig. 9 Cost control and charge-back capabilities. Cloud strategy: Skytap extends enterprise policy and cost control capabilities seamlessly to the cloud. Virtual data centers can be auto-suspended when not in use to save costs. Usage is tracked to individuals and organizations for charge-back and budget allocation. Quotas can be applied to cap usage and avoid runaway charges. Controls also exist to allow burst capacity as needed. IT policies can be enforced globally, such as approved subnet ranges for virtual data centers and the ability to prevent assignment of public IP addresses to virtual machines. Net result: The benefits of the cloud without losing control.

16 16 Top Ten Reasons to Transition Your IT Sandbox Environments to the Cloud Summary Adding cloud services to a company s IT strategy and portfolio is a smart move for all organizations. Cloud services are positioned to offer time, flexibility, and cost benefits, but CIOs and IT managers need to develop a smart transition strategy which carefully weighs costs and benefits. The high cost and unpredictable nature of dynamic IT sandbox workloads and environments makes them prime candidates to transition first.

17 17 Top Ten Reasons to Transition Your IT Sandbox Environments to the Cloud About Skytap Skytap provides Environments-as-a-Service to the enterprise. Our solution removes the inefficiencies and constraints that companies have within their software development and test lifecycles. As a result, our customers release better software faster. Today s enterprise is challenged to continuously deliver new customer-facing applications, while overcoming increasing change and complexity in their IT infrastructures. Our customers use Skytap to manage, import, deploy and decommission on-demand environments that contain everything needed to accelerate the software lifecycle, without unnecessary costs and project delays due to manual configuration and dependencies. Enterprise IT organizations maintain full visibility and cost control, while allowing dev and test teams to self-provision labs, and copy and share complex environments across global cloud regions with ease for a lasting boost in agility. Customers can import existing virtualized applications or build new applications in the cloud. Skytap can be easily accessed through any modern web browser, REST-based API, Command Line Interface (CLI), or ALM tool (Jenkins, Visual Studio TFS, etc.). Skytap customers have a choice of infrastructure. Customers can run complex computing environments on Skytap s native ESX-based infrastructure, or leverage our services atop leading cloud infrastructures such as AWS and Softlayer. Skytap, Inc nd Ave, Suite 300 Seattle, WA USA Toll Free: SKY-TAP8 ( ) Web: