5 Practical Enterprise IT Strategies for 2014

Transcription

1 5 Practical Enterprise IT Strategies for 2014 A Frost & Sullivan Whitepaper Brought to You by UBM A Frost & Sullivan White Paper

2 frost.com #1 Consider a Converged Cloud Infrastructure... 3 #2 Adopt a Cloud First Policy for New Projects... 5 #3 Build a Cloud Migration Plan for Legacy Workloads... 6 #4 Manage BYOD with Mobile Containers... 9 #5 Think Beyond Traditional Business Applications...11 The Last Word...12 End Notes...13 contents

3 5 Practical Enterprise IT Strategies for 2014: A Frost & Sullivan Whitepaper Brought to You by UBM Interest in enterprise mobility and the cloud is sky high. You understand that mobility and cloud computing can help your business become more agile, cost-effective, and innovative. In fact, your business is probably among the 81 percent of businesses that plans to deploy cloud architecture and introduce more mobile enterprise applications over the next five years. 1 The next steps pose the challenge. Before migration starts, options must be researched, a realistic business case must be built, a project plan must be developed and implemented, and success metrics need to be established. Faced with an ever growing and fragmented provider market and conflicting reports of risks and benefits, many companies struggle to take a good idea to a practical reality. Where to start? Which workloads, business processes, and applications are best suited for mobility and cloud computing? What models will deliver fastest returns? Every company has different business objectives, risk tolerance, regulatory and competitive constraints, sunk investment, budget, and growth plans. As a result, each business must embark on its own, individual journey that defines the entry points and timetable for becoming a cloud- and mobile-optimized organization. Understanding the journey, managing the challenges, and codifying the action plan into a strategic roadmap are the first steps toward approaching the next generation of enterprise IT, and this enables every business to make smart investment decisions. Let s look at five practical enterprise IT strategies to consider as your company transitions to cloud and mobility environments in #1: CONSIDER A CONVERGED CLOUD INFRASTRUCTURE But I don t have cloud experts on staff to implement a private cloud. This is among the most common objections to moving to the cloud, and many of your peers would agree. Consider: 38 percent of businesses state they have insufficient cloud expertise on staff to implement a private cloud strategy. 30 percent say they struggle to keep up with new technology. 78 percent of enterprises will rely on outside help to implement a cloud strategy. 2 % of businesses that Will rely on outside expertise to implement a cloud strategy 78% Struggle to keep up with new technology 30% Have insufficient cloud expertise on staff 38% 0% 20% 40% 60% 80% Thanks to its innate automation and standardization of routing tasks, the cloud can ultimately simplify your IT processes; however, deciding how and when to make the move as well as the actual deployment can be complex. Most IT departments are over-taxed with their regular responsibilities. Sparing time and budget to train staff on a new cloud initiative is a luxury few businesses feel they can afford. 3

4 frost.com Deploying a private cloud on a converged infrastructure can help. When choosing a converged cloud, enterprises transfer the deployment complexity to a knowledgeable cloud provider, who helps determine business needs and configures the system to suit them. A cloud platform on a converged system comes pre-integrated by the provider directly from the factory, so that all infrastructure and platform components can be installed on the customer s premises. A basic cloud can be up and running in just hours. The right provider will even offer on-site installation and support freeing your team to focus on delivering services to clients, rather than being concerned with the infrastructure that supports them. But my company doesn t have available budget for a cloud initiative. 52% say budgets are flat Constrained budgets both capital and operating have become a business reality for most enterprises. IT decision makers across the U.S. agree: 3 52 percent state budgets are flat. 35 percent cite capital budget constraints as a major issue. 36 percent say they aren t confident that they can attain the necessary budget to implement their cloud. It can be difficult for a business to make a decision and spend budget in the hope of saving money in the long run, especially when budgets are tight. Few IT leaders want to take on risk that the project may be a money drain. The bottom-line results of cloud deployed on a converged system typically outweigh the cost of a shift. Often IT leaders consider the bottom-line results in providing a solid business case for technology investments. With cloud on a converged system, it s easy to be confident about results: operating and capital expenses are predictable, and the system provides the ability to provide new infrastructure in record time. The right converged system is optimized for cloud workloads, which can minimize capital hardware expense, while the integrated platforms can reduce software licensing costs. The pre-engineered system saves weeks of time and operating costs on the business s side since you no longer need to deploy a technical resource to build, test, and maintain the cloud infrastructure. In a typical price structure, one license of the software is needed per operating system instance, regardless of the environment; and that single license generally covers every new cloud system component. 4

5 5 Practical Enterprise IT Strategies for 2014: A Frost & Sullivan Whitepaper Brought to You by UBM Converged cloud can be an attractive on-ramp to your cloud journey. The right converged cloud system doesn t require you to make a choice; it can serve as a foundation for your entire cloud strategy. Your converged cloud optimizes your data center and supports hybrid cloud deployments, allowing you to potentially take advantage of public and hosted cloud offers. Converged cloud is a simple way to give your company the immediate benefits of cloud, while providing the flexibility to support future needs. # 2: ADOPT A CLOUD FIRST POLICY FOR NEW PROJECTS This simply means that for new application requests from lines of business (LoB), start by considering cloudbased solutions. Can the needed functionality largely be met by a SaaS application or a pre-integrated solution from a cloud provider s catalogue? Can a web-based application be developed, tested, and deployed directly from the cloud? With a Cloud First policy, corporate developers become champions of the cloud strategy and heroes to their LoB colleagues for whom Cloud First equates to solutions faster. In communicating the Cloud First policy to senior executives and LoB managers, IT should emphasize cloud benefits such as faster time to deploy, improved quality, and more predictable costs offering tangible proof of IT s transformation into a business growth partner. But I won t be able to gain necessary support from the Lines of Business. Percentage of LoB manager circumvent IT to purchase cloud apps. 81% A common challenge for enterprise IT is gaining LoB buy-in. LoB managers are becoming increasingly more influential in IT decisions. Many are circumventing IT processes to purchase IT services whether applications or platforms to help them in their work, despite the potential security or compliance problems that such shadow IT can pose. Statistics around this trend are surprising: 4 81 percent of LoB managers say they circumvent IT to purchase cloud applications on their own. 35 percent of LoB employees say IT processes for deploying new applications are too slow and cumbersome. 25 percent of LoB employees say IT policies and processes make it hard for them to do their jobs. 5

6 frost.com In light of these statistics, it s not surprising that 23 percent of IT decision makers say they anticipate a problem gaining LoB support for cloud projects. Decades of restrictive, unresponsive IT processes have taken their toll. LoB employees just don t trust IT to have the interests of the business at heart. This perception whether true or not hurts everyone: IT, other employees, and the business as a whole. The company misses out on the opportunity to leverage technology innovations to get ahead of the competition. And LoB employees that subvert IT for cloud purchases may place the business at risk for security or compliance breaches. Private and public cloud deployments can overcome IT subversion. The cloud model offers many solution environments, with tradeoffs in cost, performance, and functionality. Public cloud options are the least expensive. A private cloud is turnkey, automating and standardizing application deployment. That means you can meet business needs for fast deployment. Hosted private clouds offer a higher degree of security and performance control. A hybrid cloud may be the best option for workloads that draw from multiple sources, including the on-premises private cloud. For application development, a Platform as a Service (Paas) offer may be the best option. To keep LoB involved in IT decisions without losing all control, you can use your cloud to transform IT into a services-based business, offering self-service catalogs to access any available service quickly and easily. And to gain back the trust of the LoB, you can leverage the predictable, standardized delivery to construct customized service-level agreements around deployment time, app availability, and even performance, as the right cloud platform will support standards that enable seamless bursting to a wide range of public clouds to support LoB needs. # 3: BUILD A CLOUD MIGRATION PLAN FOR LEGACY WORKLOADS Convene a cross-functional project planning team to identify workloads to migrate to the cloud. This is your opportunity to gain the trust of LoB managers who, in many companies, consider IT to be a roadblock. In presenting the cloud to your LoB counterparts, emphasize how they (not IT) will directly benefit. For example, the cloud s faster provisioning times mean fewer backlogs and less contention for resources, so that projects are more likely to finish on time and within budget. LoB managers may also be able to integrate greater functionality into their cloud applications including collaboration, data analytics, and other capabilities into your workloads. But I have critical workloads running on legacy hardware that I can t risk migrating. The cloud s perceived complexity can make you nervous about migrating the applications and workloads that fuel your business. Your IT peers agree: 5 34 percent of IT decision makers are concerned about migrating applications to a cloud infrastructure. 55 percent are concerned about poor or inconsistent application performance in the cloud. 6

7 5 Practical Enterprise IT Strategies for 2014: A Frost & Sullivan Whitepaper Brought to You by UBM % of IT decision makers that are Very concerned about poor or inconsistent application performance in the cloud 55% Very concerned about migrating applications to a cloud infrastructure 34% 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% Legacy applications are the lifeblood of your company, and many of the most critical workloads like SAP and Microsoft were put in place long before the cloud. No matter how cumbersome, labor-intensive, or costly it is to maintain legacy applications in a traditional environment, at least they work; and you may feel you can t afford to risk moving them to a new environment that you know little about. You won t be moving everything to the cloud, at least not for the foreseeable future. But you need to put some thought into which workloads should be migrated and when. And you need to start with an inventory. This can be as big or small of a job as you choose. Of course, IT already has lists of current applications it manages. But the inventory can be expanded to include workloads that are not currently automated or are partially automated for example, business analytics functions performed on an ad hoc basis via spreadsheet in a functional department. By capturing such workloads, IT is in a better position to make decisions regarding the full scope of cloud options, including integration of software functionality. Mobile Apps and the Cloud: US and Europe, 2013 Plans to Move Mobile Apps to the Cloud: US and Europe, % Within next year 40% Already in the cloud Not yet in the cloud 32% Within next three years 60% 22% No plans to move to the cloud 5% 9% Don t use the solution Don t know Base: Filtered respondents-those, who currently use cloud computing (n=445) Base: Filtered respondents-those, who have not moved mobile apps to the cloud (n=268) 7

8 frost.com As you perform your inventory, pay particular attention to legacy applications that have become cumbersome or are performing poorly. These may be candidates for a complete redesign that can include refactoring for optimal cloud delivery. Similarly, certain applications that are currently running within the firewall may be redesigned so that some elements or functions continue to be run on-premises, while others can be refactored to run in the cloud. Cloud users agree that the right cloud deployment can actually enhance workload performance percent of cloud users report that the cloud improves the scalability of infrastructure and applications. 42 percent of cloud users report that upgrading software applications is less complicated in the cloud. But how should I prioritize workloads for cloud migration? Build the migration and integration project plan. Now it s time to build the on-ramps to your company s cloud journey. What s missing for most enterprises is an approach that enables them to leverage the real benefits of the cloud (for example, agility, cost containment, speed to market, automation that reduces the administrative burden) without incurring unnecessary and unacceptable risks and disruptions to operations and performance. To break away from the current environment of cloud dabbling and skepticism, enterprise IT leaders must develop a cloud strategy that works for them a strategy built on elements of choice and control. Keep these steps in mind as you build your plan: Work with your expert and cross-functional teams to identify two or three simple and low-risk workloads to move to the cloud. For most enterprises, the best bets are web-enabled workloads that are neither critical nor strategic to the running of the business and that require limited interaction with external data sources. Among respondents to the Frost & Sullivan survey, the most common IaaS workloads are website hosting (cited by 44 percent of businesses), followed by (39 percent). Tip: Classify your workloads into buckets based on how critical and strategic they are. The cloud can take many forms. Cloud solutions can be premises-based or hosted; private, public, or hybrid; Infrastructure as a Service; Platform as a Service; Software as a Service; customer-managed or provider-managed. No single solution is right per enterprise, nor even necessarily per workload. Determine appropriate deployment model for each workload you select. Criteria will vary based on a combination of the application attributes (for example, degree of proprietary data, complexity) and your company s appetite for risk and control, weighed against the expectations for cost reduction. You may decide to deploy proprietary databases in a hosted private cloud environment and a less critical application, such as , in a public cloud. You can also choose how much management time and effort you want to devote to ongoing efforts and select (per workload) a fully-managed, partially-managed, or do-it-yourself deployment. A robust public cloud service that supports multiple configurations, management options, and deployment scenarios, is a simple way to start your cloud journey. Tip: Select a cloud provider with the broadest portfolio of services one that gives you the right choices to deploy workloads today and in the future. Identify measures for success per workload. Depending on the workload, you may be able to quantify lower IT costs associated with maintenance, productivity enhancements, or increased revenues associated with less downtime. This is where the goodwill generated with your LoB colleagues will pay off. Tip: By jointly determining the goals upfront, you will share in the success of your cloud deployment. 8

9 5 Practical Enterprise IT Strategies for 2014: A Frost & Sullivan Whitepaper Brought to You by UBM Don t expect to do it alone. Most cloud services are designed with simple interfaces. But being able to quickly setup a virtualized application in the cloud is one thing; leveraging the cloud to optimize your entire IT deployment environment is much more complex. As a result, 72% of businesses expect to turn to a partner to help them develop and implement their cloud strategies. Tip: Choose a partner with a history of managing enterprise data center solutions and with a broad portfolio of professional and managed services. But do retain control of your cloud workloads. By any legal and commercial measure, enterprises remain responsible for their own data and operations, regardless of their cloud providers and partners. As a result, beware of cloud providers that are less than transparent about their operations. Tip: Select a cloud provider that offers high levels of visibility and control over your cloud workloads through real-time dashboards and simple user interfaces. Like any other business-transforming decision, entering the cloud deserves careful consideration. But unlike most other big decisions, enterprises have the ability to enter the cloud at their own pace using a roadmap that reflects their own unique requirements, strengths, and even corporate culture. The challenge is to develop an inclusive strategy that allows them to reap the benefits of the cloud today while paving the way for greater benefits in the future. #4 MANAGE BYOD WITH MOBILE CONTAINERS The proliferation of personally-owned mobile devices that can access corporate data is becoming the weak link in enterprise security. In fact, approximately 60% of organizations now allow personal devices to connect to their corporate network, yet only four out of 10 IT decision makers report that their company has a formal BYOD policy in place, according to a recent Frost & Sullivan Mobile Enterprise Survey. Personal Devices Allowed to Connect to Company Network by Region: US and Europe, 2013 Total United States Europe 58% 59% 58% 55% 58% 52% 47% 49% 46% 23% 24% 22% 1% 1% 1% Smartphones Laptops Tablets Other devices None of these devices Source: Frost & Sullivan 2013 Mobile Enterprise Survey 9

10 frost.com For some enterprises, device level controls such as lock, wipe, geo-fencing, device encryption, and PIN access have been used to protect the corporate data that lands on their workers mobile devices. As functionally effective as these and other device-level controls are, they can also interfere with how mobile workers use their devices in their personal lives. Consequently, the practical effectiveness in mitigating security risk for the corporation is compromised as mobile device users (even a small number) work around or bypass these controls and policies in order to use these devices in the manner they prefer. So what can we do beyond traditional Mobile Device Management (MDM) to address the BYOD phenomenon? In addition to the more traditional MDM solutions, companies are encouraged to examine solutions that support secure mobile containers. At its core, a secure mobile container is a software enclave hosted on the end-user s mobile device, which isolates and protects corporate data used and stored, and business operations conducted on the end-user s mobile device. Ownership and administrative control of the container is by the issuing entity frequently an enterprise IT organization. Enterprises can apply the appropriate application management and content management policies to specific users or groups of users. Containers come in multiple forms and go by different names. In terms of forms, there are containers that separate and protect specific data, whereas other containers are individualized to a single application and protect and control data and the operations of that app (also known as app wrapping). The widest container resembles a workspace. This workspace contains multiple applications surrounded by a unifying protective wrapper. The applications contained in the workspace are defined and deployed by the issuing organization, chosen by the end user from a store of corporate-certified applications, or a combination of the two. Regardless of container form, the intent is similar isolate the corporate environment (as defined by the container) from the host device s personal or native environment. It is this isolation that facilitates corporate data protection and application control when the end user is operating within the container. In switching back to the host environment, the end user gains the full functionality of the device and the end user s personal applications without any of the corporate policy restrictions. So what are the organizational benefits of deploying mobile container solutions? By establishing an enterprise-controlled enclave on end-user mobile devices, a foundation is laid to effectively straddle the responsibility to protect business data and the desire to use this same data to enhance business outcomes. Additionally, but equally critical, end-user privacy and end-user ability to use personal mobile devices as is in personal context are protected too. This approach better reflects end-user reality than some of the overly-restrictive high security approaches that, counter to their intent, spur workers to find or develop workarounds that result in lower security. A mobile container provides the means to tie down corporate data in a unified manner on mobile devices and in a way that is independent of device ownership. The sensitive data is captured and controlled in an environment that is under the sole jurisdiction of the corporation. Also, a mobile container helps to reduce the extent of unknown, unauthorized, and uncontrolled access to corporate resources from workers mobile devices (i.e., rogue access). It is this rogue access from individually-owned mobile devices that is prompting enterprises to establish BYOD policies. However, if that BYOD policy is slanted to restricting access to select end users and circumstances rather than extending to a broader population which a mobile container enables the intended risk reduction of the BYOD policy is sub-optimized. 10

11 5 Practical Enterprise IT Strategies for 2014: A Frost & Sullivan Whitepaper Brought to You by UBM Another equally important attribute in data loss prevention and network security is that the mobile container insulates the corporation from compromised and infected mobile devices. The potentially risky behaviors of end users conducted outside the container remain outside. A stiff firewall exists between the personal and business personas. From our examination of existing container-supporting mobility solutions and their providers, the future is particularly bright. The trajectory in feature and capability expansion is strong. The intent by the solution providers to address the needs of multiple constituents end users, IT administrators, security professionals, and business directors is also strong. For enterprises that have been waiting for the right solution to come along to support and secure their mobility strategies, now is the time to evaluate mobile containers. #5 THINK BEYOND TRADITIONAL BUSINESS APPLICATIONS Most enterprise discussions of mobility and the cloud center around doing the same IT functions they re doing today, but in a different way. That mindset overlooks the most exciting benefits of these concepts: their ability to connect businesses in a new way, to create more efficient and fluid business processes, and to transform applications. Frost & Sullivan forecasts suggest that more than 90 percent of the U.S. population will own a smartphone by Advancements in mobile networks and device technologies, coupled with advancements in mobile software and applications, continue to aggressively drive data usage on mobile devices. The average U.S. smartphone user, for example, now consumes nearly 2 GB of cellular data every month and is dedicating more than 80 percent of their mobile usage time to non-voice activities (i.e. mobile applications, web-browsing, mobile video, messaging, etc.). Moreover, the number of available applications for ios and Android platforms alone has increased to 1.5 million in the short span of five years. The acceleration of mobile application innovation is only expected to increase as more developers embrace a common code base leveraging HTML5, which inherently has a much broader reach than native applications. Mobility platforms allow technology to reach unserved and underserved markets, and the cloud allows application developers to think beyond traditional business apps and processes. New technologies will spur the growth for multiple innovative applications, changing the way we live, communicate, conduct business, and interact creating a new hyper-connected world. Ultimately, the most exciting aspects of next generation mobility and cloud services may be concepts we haven t even thought of yet. 11

12 frost.com THE LAST WORD Frost & Sullivan believes next generation enterprise IT clearly deserves the attention the concepts are receiving from the industry. The powerful combination of cloud plus mobility creates the ability to reinvent how enterprises and providers manage their IT infrastructure, offering unprecedented flexibility, economy of scale, and a framework for unparalleled technology innovation. Specifically, the industry should be excited to aggressively engage the following five areas: Converged private cloud infrastructure Cloud First policy for new projects Migration plan for legacy workloads Secure mobile containers to manage BYOD Transformational business applications Frost & Sullivan applauds continued investment by the industry to address security, performance, compliance, and interoperability challenges. We encourage continued dialogue among global leaders in the mobility and cloud industries to establish common definitions and expectations concerning SLAs, regulatory compliance, and security standards. And we challenge enterprises and application developers to share best practices, think beyond today s business applications, and exploit the ubiquity and flexibility that has emerged with next generation mobility and cloud computing to create new ways of doing business. 12

13 frost.com ENDNOTES 1. Frost & Sullivan 2013 Cloud User Survey. For more information, contact Frost & Sullivan. 2. Frost & Sullivan 2013 Cloud User Survey. 3. Frost & Sullivan 2013 Cloud User Survey. 4. Stratecast 2013 SaaS Survey. 5. Frost & Sullivan 2013 Cloud User Survey. 6. Ibid

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