Why Cloud Infrastructure Services hold the key to Delivering New Opportunities for the Business in 2014 A CIO s Guide

Transcription

1 White Paper Why Cloud Infrastructure Services hold the key to Delivering New Opportunities for the Business in 2014 A CIO s Guide OneStopClick Research Cloud Services Group March 2014 Sponsored by OneStopClick 2014 All Rights Reserved

2 Table of Contents Page 1. Introduction 3 2. CIO priorities over the next 3-4 years 4 3. Enabling business innovation 5 4. Lessons in agility and speed from social media 6 5. The implications for IT 7 6. Keeping pace with technology trends and skills 7 7. Enterprise cloud services as the key to innovation 8 8. Cloud-based managed services vs. traditional outsourcing 8 9. Distributed computing in the cloud Retaining control Reasserting authority What success looks like Conclusion Sources and Resources 14 About the Sponsor, Interoute 15 About OneStopClick 17 2

3 1. Introduction The challenges facing CIOs over the last decade have been well documented. Those in the role have been called upon to facilitate transformational change and make their organisations more agile. In striving to meet this expanded brief, they have pulled out all the stops to develop a deeper understanding of the business and its diverse needs. Some might argue that the balance now has tipped too far in the other direction however. Persuaded that IT can remain relevant only if it is aligned with the organisation s broader priorities, many CIOs have waited for direction about what these might be, rather than helping to set the agenda by showing what IT makes possible. As market conditions have become more volatile, IT departments have come under new pressure to visibly add value to the business, by driving out cost and enabling step changes in efficiency and productivity. Bound by legacy investments and outdated skill-sets, many have struggled to achieve this. This is forcing CIOs to rethink their infrastructure strategies at a fundamental level. This is good news: where there is a willingness to consider broader options, there is a chance for real renewal. It is in this context that cloud-based infrastructure services are rising up the CIO s agenda. Such services have matured considerably over recent years, presenting CIOs with new freedom in their infrastructure planning, by offering a way past the demands and limitations of complex internal estates. They are also the means by which CIOs can address a whole range of emerging requirements, including the need to support (yet control) more extensive mobility and employees bring-your-own-device requirements, and to drive new innovations in customer service management. And of increasing importance is the ability of externally-provisioned infrastructure services to help alleviate the burden of regulatory compliance around data management. The following white paper explores the growing sophistication of enterprise-class cloud-based infrastructure services, and the ways that CIOs can now draw on these options to reassert their authority as architects of business-enabling technology. Fulfilling this role also allows CIOs to make space in their agendas for more strategic thinking, by reducing the time they need to devote to servicing their underlying IT infrastructure. Certainly, if IT departments are to become the value-added service provider and influencer to the business that is now required, something has got to give. 3

4 2. CIO priorities over the next 3-4 years To stay relevant to the business in a rapidly-changing external environment, the CIO and IT department need to be as agile as the infrastructure they provide to the business, and as open to new ways of working as the broader organisation. Today s IT agenda, then, is not about keeping things ticking over i.e. being ordinary and maintaining the status quo. New requirements emerge so quickly that it has become impossible to predict what s coming down the line, so there is a growing need to be ready for anything. This furious running to stay on top of things is reflected in market analyst forecasts about changing CIO priorities. Market analyst firm IDC, issuing its top 10 predictions for CIOs agendas in 2014, indicates that the quest for boldness and positive change is causing IT leaders to challenge the perceived risk associated with trying something new. It suggests that, within the next two years, over 70% of CIOs will change their primary role from directly managing IT to become an innovation partner, and that 70% of CIOs will overcome risk aversion to seek to accelerate business agility through increased cloud adoption. Table 1: IDC Top 10 Market Predictions for 2014: CIO Agenda The Top 10 Predictions are: Prediction 1 Prediction 2 Prediction 3 Prediction 4 Prediction 5 Prediction 6 Prediction 7 Prediction 8 Prediction 9 Prediction 10 In two years, over 70% of CIOs will change their primary role from directly managing IT to become an innovation partner Before 2017, only 40% of CIOs will rise to produce business enhancing insights from big data and analytics 70% of CIOs will increase enterprise exposure to risk to accelerate business agility through increased cloud adoption Enterprise business mobility will require 60% of CIOs by 2017 to support an agile architecture with next-generation mobile applications The demographic shift to young and mobile customers will require 80% of CIOs in consumer-facing businesses to integrate IT with public social networks by 2015 By 2015, 3rd Platform requirements will drive 60% of CIOs to use enterprise architecture (EA) as a required IT tool, but only 40% will deploy EA effectively By 2015, 60% of CIO security budgets for increasingly vulnerable legacy systems will be 30-40% too small to fund enterprise threat assessments By 2017, the transfer of 3rd Platform investments from IT to line-of-business budgets will require 60% of CIOs to focus the IT budget on business innovation and value By 2016, 80% of the IT budget will be based on providing a broad portfolio of IT and business services By 2018, adoption of 3rd Platform IT technologies will redefine 90% of IT roles 4

5 IDC further predicts that enterprise business mobility will require 60% of CIOs to support an agile architecture with next-generation mobile applications by By as soon as 2016, 80% of the IT budget will be devoted to providing a broad portfolio of IT and business services. Contrast this with the high proportion that is currently allocated to maintaining existing infrastructure. A survey conducted by IBM and IDC, cited in a 2013 paper from IBM Institute for Business Value (Moving from the back office to the front lines: CIO insights from the Global C-suite Study), found that a lack of scalable, extensible IT systems can prove very costly in the long run. Just keeping servers running typically consumes 65% of the IT budget in companies with a basic data centre. One reason, the study found, is the need to patch systems that are now used to perform tasks they were never designed to do, or to perform them on a scale that wasn't previously envisaged. Gartner, meanwhile, points to the growing need for IT simplification, as organisations strive to optimise and drive excess costs out of their operations. In 2013 research, which explores five key principles commonly followed by organisations showing high maturity in their cost optimisation practices, Gartner highlights a correlation between IT complexity and an absence of agility. Expanding on this theme in its own predictions for 2014 and beyond, the analyst firm points to the growing sophistication of cloud services providers which are re-inventing the way IT in which IT services can be delivered. If enterprises want to keep pace, they need to think in terms of Web-scale IT, Gartner argues. This looks to change the IT value chain in a systemic fashion [looking] for every opportunity to reduce cost and waste. But in the process of looking for opportunities to remove complexity and cost, CIOs must also keep an eye firmly on the scope to improve agility and business innovation. 3. Enabling business innovation The shocks that have reverberated across the retail sector in recent years show just what s at stake when organisations aren t able to respond to changing trends early enough. New business models supported by readilyadaptable IT are now affecting sales of all sorts of goods and services from music, films, clothes, electrical goods, utilities and groceries to financial services and even cars and homes. Blockbuster, HMV, Jessops and Comet are just some of the businesses that failed to move with the times and have now surrendered to younger and more agile players that have approached the market differently. 5

6 This unprecedented agility among new competitors hasn t come about by accident....they have been able to exploit a fluid IT infrastructure that is capable of bending and flexing with the market, allowing the business to react with phenomenal speed to new opportunities, threats and challenges. This unprecedented agility among new competitors hasn t come about by accident. Almost without exception these disruptive players have succeeded because they have not been held back by legacy systems. Rather they have been able to exploit a fluid IT infrastructure that is capable of bending and flexing with the market, allowing the business to react with phenomenal speed to new opportunities, threats and challenges. More established players with fixed, physical infrastructures, underpinning fixed processes and business models simply haven t been able to keep up. The more that transactions and customer interactions happen online, or across a combination of channels, the more vital it is that back-end processes are joined up and that they can cater for additional channels as they emerge. It s all very well having a slick online sales presence, but if this experience cannot be sustained when a customer has a follow-up query or needs to return an item, the experience quickly unravels. This in turn undermines customer confidence, and incurs additional cost to the supplier as it is forced to compensate for inadequate customer service. 4. Lessons in agility and speed from social media The social media phenomenon has shown just how little patience consumers now have and how anarchic they can be if organisations don t meet their needs. Expecting a customer to wait 15 minutes for an agent to answer their call, or a week for a product return to be processed, is no longer acceptable. And woe betide any company that can t respond swiftly if complaints are aired publicly using Facebook or Twitter. But within the core premise of social platforms there is opportunity to innovate and turn a challenge into something positive. Indeed, social media opens up a plethora of new opportunities for organisations which CIOs can help highlight and enable. Harnessed effectively, social media can add significant value for a company, driving brand awareness, providing a channel to capture rich customer feedback, boosting customer loyalty and making marketing and customer service management budgets go further. Such platforms can also provide a lowcost and easy-to-implement internal communications environment, in some cases replacing an underused corporate intranet, aiding productivity and communication. To maximise the opportunity, however, business departments need help as they try to determine what s possible and the best way of deriving value and hard benefits from these newer channels. This is where the CIO comes in - helping to determine how contributing back-end systems and processes can be knitted together to provide information and communications continuity. In many cases the only part of the puzzle that may be missing is a flexible and secure underlying infrastructure to make it all happen. 6

7 5. The implications for IT All of the emerging issues and opportunities, ranging from advanced mobility and BYOD to strategic exploitation of social media, present challenges at an IT level to which the CIO must respond. How can they enable the integrated processes, accelerated logistics, information flow, and responsive, multi-channel customer communications now required without investing budget they don t have? Innovation isn t just needed in digital business, either. It is important in any market if organisations want to stay relevant and exploit new opportunities - quickly and cost-effectively - as they emerge. That could mean being able to open or close physical premises with minimal fuss or expense. A pliable infrastructure is essential if businesses are to be able to develop and manufacture new products quickly to stay ahead of the competition, or test new markets with minimum risk. It is also critical in enabling an organisation to expand into additional locations - to take advantage of seasonal trade or a temporary event, for example. With a fixed infrastructure and inflexible business processes, the effort and cost involved for something tentative and speculative would soon undermine the business case. With a dynamically provisioned and centrally managed set-up, on the other hand, the usual barriers to expansion or opportunism are quickly lowered and the speed to develop and produce is greatly reduced, promoting innovation and the pursuit of ambitious, profitable growth. 6. Keeping pace with technology trends and skills The accelerating pace of technology development is another significant reason for CIOs to consider new approaches to infrastructure delivery. Skills shortages are a permanent preoccupation for IT leaders, made worse when there is no elasticity in the budget to lure sought-after candidates. European Vacancy Monitor, published quarterly by the European Commission, reported in its November 2013 edition that the number of ICT students in higher education declined between 2004 and 2011, especially in the west of Europe. The European Commission predicts that the UK will need an additional 500,000 IT professionals by Although there are indications of a flow of workers with ICT skills from east to west, there is always strong competition for the best recruits. The accelerating pace of technology development is another significant reason for CIOs to consider new approaches to infrastructure delivery. The challenge of finding good, relevant IT expertise is one thing; another is setting aside the resources to pay for it - if and when the right talent can be located. With continuing pressure on budgets, organisations must also consider the cost of attracting, keeping and training the evolving skills they 7

8 need. Maintaining a specialist talent base internally makes for a substantial ongoing overhead that will only continue to escalate as development cycles accelerate and skills need to be refreshed at ever shorter intervals. 7. Enterprise cloud services as the key to innovation There are already signs that CIOs see what needs to be done as they try to move forward. In October 2013, Gartner predicted that cloud computing would grow to represent the bulk of new IT spend by as soon as As long as CIOs are being pushed to deliver more with less, it is clear that they need an alternative strategy for IT delivery. Outright IT ownership is burdensome administratively, leads to silos and lock-in, is expensive and inflexible, and prevents low-risk business experimentation. Cloud computing if the right services are chosen offers a much better way to keep technologies up to date, manage costs, and dynamically match resources to demand, with unprecedented flexibility. IDC concurs that cloud services are rising rapidly up the IT agenda. In September 2013, it predicted that over the next 3-4 years public IT cloud services will have a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 23.5% - five times that of the IT industry as a whole. Expanding on the projections, Frank Gens, senior vice-president and chief analyst at IDC, noted that while the first wave of cloud services adoption had been focused on improving the efficiency of the IT department, over the next several years the primary driver for cloud adoption will shift from economics to innovation as leading-edge companies invest in cloud services as the foundation for new competitive offerings. The emergence of cloud as the core for new 'business as a service' offerings, he said, will accelerate cloud adoption and dramatically raise the cloud model's strategic value beyond CIOs, to CxOs of all types. 8. Cloud-based managed services vs. traditional outsourcing Looking externally for IT service delivery does not necessitate a return to the inflexible outsourced services projects of old. In the past, such services typically failed to help organisations meet the innovation brief, due to the rigidity of contracts. So much was set down in fine detail that introducing any new requests led to tension and escalating expense. Over the next several years the primary driver for cloud adoption will shift from economics to innovation as leadingedge companies invest in cloud services as the foundation for new competitive offerings. Many CIOs were lulled into a false sense of security by the services too, coming to rely too heavily on external providers to the extent that they failed to maintain their own internal skill-sets. As a result, they have found it 8

9 difficult to take services back in house, because they have lacked the necessary architectural expertise and technical insight into the way systems and processes work. In outsourcing key infrastructure they gave up ownership and understanding of the structures that underpin the business. Cloud-based managed infrastructure services fill this gap, by giving ownership, leadership and control back to the CIO. This is enabled in part by efficient automated provisioning and resource management controlled through web based user interfaces, and the ability to choose directly where data resides and where it does not. This level of flexibility and control enables CIOs to help their organisations innovate and move forward again, but this time with unprecedented scale, flexibility, visibility and control. 9. Distributed computing in the cloud The networked cloud computing model is becoming increasingly appealing as a platform for services. It combines the secure and scalable distribution of IT (the network) with everyday processing (computing). Specialist enterprise service providers have invested heavily in perfecting such facilities, giving rise to the phenomenon of the Virtual Data Centre (VDC) the opportunity for serious corporate organisations with even the most sensitive data to run virtual IT operations in the cloud. IDC notes that the expanding variety of cloud deployment options is an important factor driving growth in cloud services spending. Commenting on the company s projections for the growth of cloud use between now and 2017 (IDC Forecasts Worldwide Public IT Cloud Services Spending to Reach Nearly $108 Billion by 2017 as Focus Shifts from Savings to Innovation, September 2013), chief analyst Frank Gens said, The growing richness of these options is a clear accelerator for overall cloud services adoption. The emergence of Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) offerings has helped to shift momentum from dedicated private cloud offerings toward public (shared/multi -tenant) cloud offerings. By offering the attributes of public cloud (economics, scale, pace of innovation) with some of the privacy and control features associated with private cloud, VPCs are effectively addressing many of the objections that have held customers back. 9

10 All the signs are that enterprises' interest in cloud-based infrastructure services is rising sharply, as is extrapolated in IDC's forecast chart below: The correlation between the projected growth in flexible, fit-for-purpose externally-managed infrastructure services and the soaring adoption of socalled 3 rd Platform technologies (ie beyond the desktop including mobile computing, social networking, advanced cloud services, and big-data analytics solutions) is no coincidence. IDC s projections for 3 rd -platform growth are shown below. The assumption is that complex and restricted internal infrastructures simply won't be able to offer the requisite flexibility and scalability to cope with the evolving IT needs of a business - especially if it is struggling now. 10. Retaining control One of the promises of the cloud is the opportunity to provision resources dynamically or virtually, without companies having to be tied to a certain number of servers doing specific tasks in fixed locations. The leap of faith required to exploit this kind of computing model simply involves CIOs being prepared to un-tether themselves mentally from being able to see and touch their data. Far from being the huge step they imagine, this can be highly liberating. It frees IT departments from having to house, protect and maintain their own systems, for example. It also makes them securely 10

11 accessible (and always available) to users who may be scattered or in transit between multiple locations. But, in considering a move to the cloud, CIOs are quite right to take steps to understand where their data will be held and might end up. If a provider cannot guarantee where customer data is held, whether at a data centre or national level, then the service s suitability for enterprise compliance may be questionable. But the right provider will be able to provide that information and all associated assurances around data privacy, resilience, sovereignty and compliance. The key is to narrow the search to fit-for-purpose, enterprise-grade services. Here, data is kept within dedicated facilities, in specified locations (eg. within national boundaries if this is a regulatory requirement). This means it remains distinct from other companies data, and in a location where it can be checked on at any time. For the ultimate in enterprise-class cloud services, 'networked cloud' infrastructure provides secure, flexible access to data and applications held in the cloud via managed and serviced integrated network infrastructure. With the right cloud infrastructure partner in place, CIOs can start to drive their organisation towards a more agile foundation ie. the right kind of architecture to support innovation in a way that is cost effective and isn t as extreme as wholesale outsourcing. After all, being ready for what s next doesn t mean being able to see into the future. It means having a business setup and underlying infrastructure that allows assets to be regrouped and deployed quickly. In this way, new opportunities can be seized or threats proactively averted, and with minimal disruption. That s something that can t be measured in bits and bytes. Virtual Data Centres are so called because they harness server and storage virtualisation to give organisations control over the facilities they need at any given time - without over-provisioning. Also known as Infrastructure-asa-Service (IaaS) facilities, they enable resources to be allocated on demand, and dynamically directed to the point of need, irrespective of location. This allows organisations to move offices or open new branches easily, set-up temporary premises, and support mobile workers, with secure, centralised, hands-on control. Being ready for what s next doesn t mean being able to see into the future. It means having a business setup and underlying infrastructure that allows assets to be regrouped and deployed quickly. In this way, new opportunities can be seized or threats proactively averted, and with minimal disruption. With a networked cloud computing model as a platform for services, then, CIOs can start to experiment with and react to changing business requirements at unprecedented speed becoming the kind of responsive and enabling service provider their organisation needs. 11

12 11. Reasserting authority Once CIOs have future-proofed their infrastructure and regained control of costs, they can resume a position of leadership. It means they can start to talk to the business about what s possible for example how the company can join up and automate processes, and provision resources dynamically as it seeks to maximise its market opportunity and broaden the diversity of its offering, without increasing its risk or significantly bumping up costs. Cloud-based infrastructure services give organisations speed to market, shortening the planning cycles so that companies can act on new ideas while they are still relevant. This in turn increases their likelihood of delivering the expected results. And because they don t need to worry about buying too much capacity or physical infrastructure which is then never used, they can experiment more readily, knowing that the risk will be small. If a new venture doesn t work, it is much easier to pull the plug or redeploy without unwanted costs. In this sense, the cloud allows organisations to follow the market in extreme cases to within hours or even minutes of an opportunity presenting itself. 12. What success looks like The European Space Agency (ESA) has built its SuperSites Exploitation Platform on Interoute s Virtual Data Centre. In so doing it has created an accessible data lake of its satellite data. This means not only that this vast array of content can be housed in a single, reliable and easily accessible central resource. It also means that scientists across Europe can easily select the data they want to look at and, using the tools housed in the VDC, perform direct analyses on that data. This saves huge amounts of time by removing the need for the multiple external research groups to take delivery of large reams of raw data. The set-up is part of ESA s mission to support the scientific community and encourage better use of satellite data to monitor and track our planet. By using the VDC to support its SuperSites Exploitation Platform, ESA is facilitating innovative collaboration in the cloud. With ready access to target intelligence within ESA s big-data banks, it is hoped that Earth Science experts will be in a better position to tackle geohazards such as earthquakes and volcanic activity. The ESA platform enables on-demand processing of satellite data, with initial access to 13TB of data, encompassing 50,000 radar scenes from ESA. The ESA platform also includes a cloud toolbox a series of virtual desktop resources to analyse and process the data. 12

13 At the other end of the spectrum, GC Europe, a leading European manufacturer of dental care products is using a network-integrated VDC to help host and share huge 3D and multimedia data files with employees and partners across the world, without the need to clog up . The company is also connecting its dispersed offices, manufacturing, sales and research locations throughout Europe using a managed virtual private network which has the VDC embedded within it. The use of a VDC is part of a continuing mission by the manufacturer to reduce costs, improve performance and increase robustness and reliability, and the company was particularly attracted to the maintenance and performance benefits of the cloud-based infrastructure service. It has been particularly impressed by the service s speed: the transfer of 2GB of multimedia files across the virtual infrastructure is reported to be 260% faster than with a previous managed hosting service. This is an indication of just how far cloud-based infrastructure services have come in recent years. 13. Conclusion For all of the ambitions CIOs are trying to fulfil for their organisations, building their own proprietary infrastructure today makes as little sense as a company trying to manufacture its own car fleet. Unless this is a company s core business, it will never measure up to a dedicated service in terms of cost efficiency, consistent delivery or reliability. It is important to remember, too, that moving to the cloud is not simply about outsourcing what was once in house, or indeed being indiscriminate in what stays and what goes. Rather it is an opportunity to be strategic and selective, to think and behave differently and to work towards a more agile, resilient and responsive infrastructure with which to better serve the business. An environment where they can test services, at low cost and low risk. One where the CIO remains in control, and is able to choose what to migrate - ie. whatever makes economic, technological and performance sense; no more, no less. The turbulence in the CIO s world has never before reached its current extremes, but despite this - or maybe because of it - there s never been a more exciting time to be a CIO. The turbulence in the CIO s world has never before reached its current extremes, but despite this - or maybe because of it - there s never been a more exciting time to be a CIO. Certainly the opportunities for IT to make a real difference to business have never been greater. Nor have the vehicles and services to support CIOs in their ambitions been more abundant. The only real limit now is CIOs vision and ambition. 13

14 14. Sources & Resources IDC Market Predictions for 2014 (IDC, December 2013): Five Principles Underpin IT Cost Optimization Success (Gartner, July 2013): Moving from the back office to the front lines: CIO insights from the Global C-suite Study, IBM Institute for Business Value, 2013: Gartner Identifies the Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2014 (Gartner, October 2013): European Vacancy Monitor, November 2013: ec.europa.eu/social/blobservlet?docid=11089&langid=en EU Commission launches 'grand coalition' to tackle IT shortage (BBC News Online, March 2013): Gartner Says Cloud Computing Will Become the Bulk of New IT Spend by 2016 (Gartner news release, October 2013): IDC Forecasts Worldwide Public IT Cloud Services Spending to Reach Nearly $108 Billion by 2017 as Focus Shifts from Savings to Innovation, IDC, September 2013: 14

15 About Interoute Interoute Communications Ltd is the owner operator of Europe's largest cloud services platform, its full-service Unified ICT solutions serve international enterprises as well as every major European telecommunications incumbent and the major operators of North America, East and South Asia, governments and universities. The company has been recognized with numerous industry awards for its innovation and market leading services, most recently winning Frost & Sullivan's European Telecoms Provider in IaaS Company of the Year Award Today people and customers across the globe rely on Interoute's Unified Connectivity, Computing and Communications products that encompass cloud infrastructure and storage services, video and voice conferencing, virtual and physical private networks. Interoute's extensive fibre optic network connects 30 countries, 102 cities to its 11 Data Centres, 10 Virtual Data Centres and 31 colocation facilities. It also has connections to an additional 140 partner owned Data Centres. Interoute also serves as the landing point for subsea cables from the Africa, Asia, The Middle East and Europe, making Interoute the digital bridge between North and South and East and West. With established operations throughout mainland Europe, North America and Dubai, Interoute also owns and operates dense city networks throughout Europe's major business centres. For more information, visit About Interoute s Virtual Data Centre (VDC) Interoute s Virtual Data Centre (VDC) is a highly scalable, fully automated Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) solution. It provides on-demand computing, storage and applications integrated into the heart of an organisation s IT infrastructure. Interoute VDC is the first cloud computing solution that can be deployed with the simplicity and convenience of the public cloud, combined with the security and confidence that a private cloud brings. The ability to offer fully automated public and private cloud on the same platform makes VDC unique. Interoute Virtual Data Centre combines computing virtualisation in the cloud with network virtualisation on the ground. It delivers a virtual IT infrastructure as a fully automated online service and connects across Europe using Interoute s virtualised MPLS fibre-optic network. With VDC, infrastructure managers don t have to spend time and effort installing and managing firewalls between Virtual Data Centres, because all data traffic is inherently secure as it moves between them. This advanced technology gives organisations the choice between having VDC delivered as a private cloud service via their corporate VPN, or as a cloud service via the public Internet - or both. 15

16 The individual Interoute VDC data centres are not isolated but are built into Interoute s vast pan- European network. This means we don t charge our customers for any data transfers in and out of their VDCs or between VDC zones. Interoute VDC is the virtual equivalent of a real physical data centre, offering companies the same control and resource as they would have in their own data centre - but without the cost of equipment, power, colocation, network and manpower. Within your Interoute Virtual Data Centre you can choose to build your server, switching and storing in exactly the same way as you would in the physical world. You can specify RAM, CPU and storage to create any desired configuration, and as often as needed. This allows infrastructure managers to add new applications, services and customers in line with internal demand. Interoute VDC has all the benefits expected from a cloud - computing infrastructure, elasticity, pay-asyou-go pricing and real-time deployment. But Interoute VDC is not simply a cloud of virtual servers. It is a completely new approach to designing and operating a secure computing solution, which offers organisations an actual data centre they can control at a click on Europe s largest cloud computing platform. Interoute Virtual Data Centre is a truly unique cloud computing platform the first without compromises. To take a free trial of the Interoute VDC, visit cloudstore.interoute.com For more information Visit

17 About OneStopClick OneStopClick is an independent technology research firm that focuses on critical issues in cloud computing, information security, business connectivity and networking. The Company publishes news, articles, white papers and technology-related research helping IT professionals and business executives evaluate and implement technology solutions. For more information Visit us Call us +44 (0)