Deploying the Enterprise Cloud Tim Hancock Publication date: October 2012
Deploying the Enterprise Cloud Many enterprises now recognise that the benefits outweigh the risks in Cloud adoption. However, it is those organisations that adopt a more pragmatic approach to embracing IT infrastructure as a service that will achieve early gains and competitive advantage as a result. In recent work examining the early adoption of Cloud among UK Enterprises, four essential steps were identified as the pathway to successful deployment of Cloud Services. It is expected that this process will become embedded over the next twelve months as more organisations start their journey towards Cloud adoption. Executive Summary The stages identified as crucial to the adoption of Cloud Services within the Enterprise are as follows: To ensure that clear business benefits can be demonstrated and achieved To ensure that Cloud Services will integrate and compliment current technical and service architecture and the services organisation To ensure that enterprise data is secure in transit and at rest in auditable locations To ensure that end users of new applications and services do not notice any difference in performance. This paper provides an insight into these themes and a methodology for successful Cloud adoption.
Infrastructure as a service today Despite the acknowledged benefits of Cloud Computing, the rate of take-up by Enterprises has not yet reached critical mass. This is because Cloud providers have yet to offer a risk-free migration path that allows the enterprise to optimise existing operations whilst benefiting from the agility the Cloud offers. Most Cloud providers simply offer a defined service but fail to advise organisations on how to enable Cloud adoption and acceptability. Adding another technology such as Cloud, into an already crowded IT arena, has the potential to become unmanageable and ultimately more costly and inefficient if not planned and executed well. Early adopters who have started to deploy enterprise grade Cloud Services have quickly realised that there are a number of factors that are key to success; this paper shares the insights from that experience. Another new technology headache for IT? Enterprises are looking for more ways than ever before to make their operations more cost efficient and effective in the deployment of business critical applications. This often presents conflicts. The adoption of mobile technologies is a good example. How does an organisation respond quickly to the growing range of opportunities presented by mobile technologies without being constrained by IT? Given the current economic climate, businesses are less confident about committing to larger capital spend projects. At the same time, they are wary that a lack of investment will make it harder for them to recover quickly from the current economic difficulties. The challenge from business leaders to their IT executives is to find ways to ensure that the business opportunities are optimised while improving IT effectiveness and processes at the same time. The real stretch is to guarantee that both capital and operational funds are effectively managed and optimised. In theory, Cloud based services can offer the means to provide both agile applications and infrastructure to meet this challenge. However, the introduction of another new technology into an already challenged IT organisation is potentially daunting and disruptive. The winning solution will need thorough investigation and planning to show how the business can benefit and why they should make this change. Managed Service Providers - the Enterprise Cloud enabler? The services currently provided by pure play public Cloud providers and Systems Integrators are not delivering what the enterprise needs today because they re either providing the pure technology without an integration path or tying the enterprise into a complex contract where the benefits are never truly realised. Industry Analysts such as Forrester, have recognised the role for Managed Service Providers. The network is critical to the effective deployment of Cloud and it is the Managed Service Providers who are best placed to deliver enterprise grade Cloud Services in a secure manner. Any enterprise grade service must have the flexibility to allow scale in both computing power and bandwidth. The Managed Service Provider can ensure organisations have access to a network that provides them with the capacity they require and that customers pay only for what they use. They can also ensure a secure transfer layer for the enterprise Cloud, again differing significantly from public facing Cloud Services.
Delivering Cloud in the Enterprise The effective adoption of Cloud Services is not just about the technology, it s about the action taken to ensure the promised business benefits are achieved. A pattern is emerging from early adopters of Cloud Services and this provides a potential pathway for others to follow for the successful adoption of Cloud Services in the Enterprise. Demonstrate clear business benefits can be achieved As with any new IT project it is important to ensure that a clear strategy is in place at the outset. The starting point is ensuring the right level of executive sponsorship. It is crucial that the Executive Board and the owners of applications in the business are supportive of any new IT initiative. That is certainly true of Cloud Services. The Chief Financial Officer needs to understand how this technology and its adoption process will help optimise the supply chain and reduce over capacity. The Chief Operating Officer will need to know how the technology will impact the enterprise. And, the Chief Executive Officer will need to know how this will help to get products and services to market faster and deliver competitive advantage. The education of the executive team is key to gaining the level of support required to progress the deployment of Cloud Services. Once this support has been established, the project team with the skill set needed to adopt this new technology can be put in place. However, undertaking this strategic IT initiative and running day to day operations with the same resources could impede success. An early gap analysis will identify where to bolster the team with additional experts. An early assessment of the benefits and impacts on the business that the enterprise Cloud could deliver will help focus the team. This is a great opportunity to identify where optimisation and consolidation of existing architecture could provide quick wins before moving to a defined migration plan and architecture review. It is crucial at this stage of the assessment to ensure that all costs are understood and the deployment will realise its promised value. Without this stage, there is a real danger that Cloud will become just another technology and associated costs will spiral beyond current budgets. Once this has been achieved then implementation and acceleration of the programme to prove the results can be presented back to the executive sponsor for endorsement. Understand how Cloud Services will integrate and compliment current technical and services architecture The analysis phase at the start of the adoption process will ultimately define the optimum future state architecture. At this point, the focus should be on defining the business objectives, the strategy and migration roadmap as well as the team structure needed to achieve successful adoption. An initial high level review of the environment and cost base will quickly determine the business case for enterprise Cloud Services. Then a deeper review of the architecture and applications will identify those suitable for retirement or consolidation. At this stage, the enterprise can decide what they want to keep, what they want to retire and what they need to migrate. This also represents an ideal opportunity to optimise any stalled virtualisation projects. The migration plan will need to be thoroughly designed, costed and include the methodology to migrate. Enterprises have quickly understood that there is need for a hybrid infrastructure, leveraging what they currently have whilst integrating the agile services that provide flexibility and costs savings. Early adopters have experienced reductions of up to 40% over existing infrastructure costs and it is estimated that up to 50% of applications could be delivered from a secure enterprise Cloud infrastructure. One of the attributes of Cloud is its self service provision. Provision is generally accessed by a portal and therefore the impact on the service architecture needs to be understood in order to ensure successful adoption. Without a clearly defined service integration programme, resultant Cloud sprawl, whereby services can be set up ad hoc without correct governance, could remove the promised cost benefits.
Ensure end users won t notice An early review of applications and the baseline for their performance is desirable so that any issues can be understood. A rigorous test regime should be provided to ensure that applications that move to the Cloud still provide the end user with the desired experience. It is important to establish this at the outset to ensure perception does not become an issue at a later stage. In the process of adopting Cloud, there is an opportunity to decide which applications would benefit from optimisation and which are good enough for consumption in their current state. This choice can be offered by IT back to the business, providing an end to end view across all components, and the ability to trouble shoot application issues in real time becomes achievable. Ensure data is secure in transit and at rest in auditable locations The inherent security offered by the Enterprise Cloud allays most of the fears and hype regarding data security. This is because access to the platform is via the existing private network and is secured in defined data centres within the UK. The network therefore provides a key differentiator versus public Cloud providers offering access to the platform only. Vodafone Cloud Adoption Methodology Based on experience of developing Cloud adoption strategies for its customers, We have designed a standard methodology to support organisations in developing and realising their Cloud plans. This unique approach ensures that a practical adoption plan, in line with the business objectives, can be developed. In reality, for many organisations this leads to a hybrid approach using a broad range of dedicated, co-located and virtualised services as well Cloud-based solutions. An initial on-line assessment to gain insight into an organisation s readiness for Cloud Services is followed by the Cloud Snapshot. This will demonstrate the benefits that Cloud Services could have for the business. It will clarify and qualify the scale of opportunity, the scope of options and areas of greatest potential for the business. Following on from this the Impact Analysis phase enables an identification of the commercial benefits of the recommended adoption approach, providing a Board ready business case identifying the cost savings, organisational impacts and application enhancements required for the Cloud Service. It also provides a view of the cost and duration of the business s migration onto the service. Once the business case is approved, the Transformation stage moves the customer through to migration. It starts with mapping the current state and complexity of the architecture, looking at which applications are in use and their dependencies on other applications. This allows for the identification of consolidation and transformation targets as well as providing the building blocks for risk free migrations. The migration phase is rigorously supported by a planning tool which stores details of each application and its activity dependencies. This enables a meticulously executed migration that is outage free. The Vodafone Cloud Adoption Methodology is one of a kind today. Through it, Vodafone are the first to enable the Enterprise to mitigate their risk and embrace Cloud Services and the associated benefits to their business.
Flexible Computing from Vodafone The Vodafone Cloud Service, Flexible Computing is a multi-tenant Cloud platform built specifically for enterprises and promises a new and better way for organisations to structure, manage and implement IT services. It embraces the benefits of Cloud Services such as server virtualisation, utility pricing (paying only for what you need) and shared infrastructure as an alternative to the costly dedicated architectures used by most businesses today. We estimate that moving to multi-tenant Cloud architecture will reduce operational costs by circa 40% with the added benefit of being able to scale the service to the enterprise s need. Having the ability to do this without any capital investment or integration of products will enable IT to offer services back to the business in near real time rather than introducing a long tail of buy and build that has typically frustrated business leaders. Flexible Computing cuts though the hype surrounding Cloud Services and provides immediate access to a platform that will transform how businesses operate. Flexible Computing is Cloud Computing at its truest: driving agility right into the heart of the business and reducing CAPEX and OPEX from day one. Summary The benefits offered by Cloud Services are a reduction in both operational cost and deferment of capital infrastructure costs; improved responsiveness to the business and delivery of competitive advantage as IT becomes an enabler not an inhibitor to new ideas and revenue generating opportunities. As a Service Provider, Vodafone understands the need for capacity on demand and therefore is best placed to serve the enterprise effective Cloud Services. For the enterprise, a more pragmatic approach is required to guide them through the current Cloud wash. There is a now a clear distinction between what s delivered by public Cloud providers versus an Enterprise Grade Service Provider like Vodafone, namely a secure, enterprise grade Cloud Service. Embracing the enterprise Cloud requires a clearly defined strategy linked to business benefits, a migration plan to help the adoption and an architecture that can leverage what is currently deployed. For the IT organisation, having access to a defined Cloud Adoption Programme delivered through the right Service Provider offers the optimal means of delivering the benefits desired by the business. Providing the ability to reduce costs and give access to a scalable secure, platform that meets the business s demand for new services, can only elevate the relationship between the IT team and the business users they serve, enabling the IT team to truly orchestrate services rather than being constrained by day to day operations.
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