The CIO s Dream: A Cloud Platform With Lower Cost, More Agility and Better Performance. A publication by:

Transcription

1 The CIO s Dream: A Cloud Platform With Lower Cost, More Agility and Better Performance A publication by:

2 Introduction The chief information officer or chief technology officer carries the weight of the world in today s enterprise IT environment. No matter what goes wrong, whether it s network storage and capacity issues or a crashed payroll app, he owes the CEO an answer. So you d think enterprise cloud computing would have been a godsend for the CIO, delivering unlimited capacity and untold savings on hardware, software, energy and manpower. Cloud should have been a budget boon, but instead it s a budget buster. Too often, though, those benefits have proven elusive. The private cloud you require takes too long to implement, and it costs too much. You know the drill: Align the management software with your cloud needs, set up the environment, stitch together some legacy software applications, figure out scalability and licensing and management of multiple types of cloud setups and configurations. On and on it goes. Often, we ve seen projects take nine months or even a year to attain production readiness. Meanwhile, your deployment and test teams sit and wait. Or, worse, they procure public cloud space because they can t wait, and you end up with layers of shadow IT that you no longer control. 2

3 Introduction (cont.) And all the while, the CEO is breathing down your neck because customer apps are falling behind in development and the company is losing competitiveness. Is it any wonder cloud adoption has been slower than all the hype indicated it might be? True business value has remained elusive. In a pinch, the easier path for CIOs might have been to buy more hardware and fund another data center expansion. Connectloud offers a better way. Our hardware-agnostic ucloud, based on open-source technology, is more cost effective because you are leveraging our technology to orchestrate a seamless cloud across multiple other clouds. Your cloud, of any type or combination of types, can be up and running in a fraction of the time it takes other vendors. And when it s up, it will have same agility as Amazon Web Services while providing a safe and robust environment for developing and testing new applications, services and virtual machines. 3

4 The problem As we ve said, the CIO s burden is heavy. He must keep daily control over the myriad technology and data resources reporting to him. He is in charge of people with a range of skill sets who handle everything from databases, data warehousing and financial records to payroll and human resources. The CIO s charges must also maintain the cloud. The CIO needs the ability to offer his customers both inside and outside the organization scale on demand according to enterprise needs, and to help the CEO manage and reduce the tremendous costs of hardware and software. If the CIO s IT doesn t employ the cloud, he might have to buy 10 to 20 new servers every year, along with related software licensing, at a cost of several hundred thousand dollars per server. The CIO also is charged often under various federal financial and privacy laws with protecting an enterprise s data. In addition, he needs to rein in the rogue shadow IT projects that rise up because of slow availability of cloud resources, most notably in development and test. Lastly, he is responsible for performance. It s up to him to maintain enterprise delivery at web 2.0 speed. With all that responsibility, it s critical for him to find a way to control his environment so he can know what s happening at all times. He must look at whether a given cloud environment can handle the size of the applications his business uses. 4

5 Finance, Health Care, Retail is Especially Difficult to Navigate The CIO s job, while difficult in any industry, is especially intense in fields such as finance and health care, which place an emphasis both on protecting sensitive information and complying with laws like HIPAA, Sarbanes-Oxley and Dodd-Frank. Finance and health care also entail the use of multiple data centers and various clouds. And they require the CIO to find suitable, disaster-proof locations for placement of data centers and storing of information, all while adhering to local laws and regulations. Retail is another industry where data security is paramount, as witnessed by recent breaches of point-of-sale systems at Target and Neiman Marcus. Retailers also value up-time, speed and performance from their IT infrastructure. If a company already has a private cloud, the process likely wasn t easy. The CIO must have multiple engineers for provisioning and monitoring, and moving data and applications to the cloud was a difficult and expensive process, usually accomplished by a stitchedtogether or bolted-on solution from a legacy vendor. In short, the cloud often hasn t delivered the value it should to CIOs. That may be why so many companies have held back. All that was before ucloud, a cloud management platform that gives all the benefits of the cloud fast and easy deployment, flexibility and lower costs with none of the hassles. 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. Connectloud s management platform cuts deployment times for private clouds from months to between 30 and 45 days, depending on hardware provisioning. The ucloud software provisions and deploys switches, firewalls and routers quickly, orchestrating these virtual machines to make your private cloud strong and secure. Using a locked-down, repeatable process, our software-based system can help launch services quickly and handle fast growth of your cloud environment. We tackle large deployments in a standardized, structured way. And our architecture which encrypts access to your data without touching the underlying information makes for faster deployments. This means avoiding the delays from testing data for your cloud deployments that other architectures require. Ease of use. The ucloud self-service user interface can provision and deploy clouds in a matter of minutes after the hardware comes online. Our software automates and controls the cloud provisioning, while role-based administration provides control and security. Tenant administrators can easily and efficiently deploy their clouds and decide who in their business gets access to various areas of the cloud. 7

8 The ucloud solution (cont.) Transparency. CIOs can get a clear view of all costs of their IT infrastructure, along with data points on how much infrastructure is in use at a given time, the number of applications deployed atop it and the enterprise s monthly use of those apps. This helps predict future costs, such as when and how much additional hardware will be necessary. That leads to lower operational and capital expenditures. Control. CIOs can monitor IT assets through an intuitive dashboard and keep track of all the services they re using, along with flagging trouble spots and determining how they can be fixed. The CIO also can set up specific clouds and differentiate the applications on them for certain needs. For instance, a cloud could be established to use in case of natural disaster, complete with back-ups of all IT and ways of notifying the CIO when something bad happens. The CIO also can get a better grip on issues such as shadow IT projects that can spring up in the virtualized infrastructure. User administrators can quickly launch and shut down virtual applications and machines. If you re using public cloud, that dexterity in cloud management can save lots of money. 8

9 The ucloud solution (cont.) Subscription Model. Connectloud customers avoid vendor lock-in because we lease our technology. Clients pay as they go based on how many virtual machines they use. This model allows Connectloud customers to pay only for what they need, and to scale and shrink their usage as circumstances dictate. Lower costs. Connectloud helps bring dramatic reduction in both operating and capital costs. That s partly because we use open source software, which costs less, and partly because our software automates jobs that people once took care of. Our model can save companies $10 million to $20 million a year, and much more in the case of large enterprises. Security. System administrators can manage multiple clouds from a single point of control, reducing the amount of human intervention needed. Our technology encrypts the operating commands but leaves your data untouched, meaning ucloud complies with regulations such as HIPAA and Sarbanes-Oxley. Agility. ucloud can scale by running public, private and hybrid clouds and letting customers help themselves to more or less capacity as their needs change. Growing or shrinking the size of a cloud can happen in minutes. Our software helps prevent vendor lock-in because it works with different cloud providers. Tasks like audits can be performed easier in the cloud than in legacy systems, and even development and testing types can stay on the private cloud rather than going on the public cloud. No other management platform offers total control over your cloud environment like ucloud does. 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 subtenants. In the case of a CIO, that could mean different departments within an organization. Clients can be segregated within their pools, with each dataset safe and secure from all others. It also allows easy client billing or accounting for the resources each subtenant uses. 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 If setting up and managing clouds has been like a bad dream, wake up to a new day with Connectloud. The ucloud platform will help your IT infrastructure cost less for operating and capital purposes, perform better with more control, get up and running faster and retain unlimited flexibility. Get in touch to learn 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