Cloud Services Brief SunGard Enterprise Cloud Services Date: March 2012 Author: Mark Bowker, Senior Analyst Abstract: Long-time managed services and disaster recovery specialist SunGard is raising its game by offering Enterprise Cloud Services. Enterprise Cloud Services allows SunGard to deliver security and availability for organizations compute, network, and storage resources and ultimately help them contain costs and provide efficiencies that might not otherwise be possible due to the increasing demand on their internal IT resources. Cloud Computing from a Trusted Resource Organizations are finding that they need to extend their IT capabilities to boost operational efficiency and speed time to market. They want to achieve that, however, without increasing technical complexity for their end-users and without the expense and space demands of additional onsite servers and storage components. Cloud computing is no longer a buzzword. Though the adoption of public cloud computing services has been tempered to date, recent ESG research shows that many are considering it: 74% of organizations plan to increase spending on cloud computing services in 2012. 1 Figure 1 reveals a noticeable increase in the usage of both SaaS and IaaS offerings between 2011 and 2012. Some of those organizations are turning to SunGard. Figure 1. Public Cloud Service Usage Continues to Increase Usage of the following cloud computing services, by year. (Percent of respondents) Software-as-a-service (SaaS) 34% 46% 2012 (N=614) 2011 (N=611) Infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) 17% 27% 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 1 Source: ESG Research Report, 2012 IT Spending Intentions Survey, January 2012.
Services Brief: SunGard Enterprise Cloud Services 2 Though the SunGard name has long been synonymous with disaster recovery solutions, it has also offered hosting solutions for more than a decade. The company has taken advantage of Vblock architecture from VCE to extend into Enterprise Cloud Services with the promise of reducing IT costs while addressing customers critical production needs in a highly secure, enterprise-grade environment. Building on SunGard s decades of experience managing recovery and production of heterogeneous environments, including support for hybrid infrastructures, Enterprise Cloud Services equips SunGard to assume management responsibility for the security and availability of the compute, network, and storage resources of an enterprise s total cloud infrastructure. It can also interconnect with hosted physical environments for a hybrid solution, offering the option of migrating some application environments to the cloud while keeping others in-house. IT organizations are quickly picking up the pace of adoption of cloud infrastructure services and are using them for a variety of reasons. According to ESG research (see Figure 2), while the most widely used services center on cloud storage and disaster recovery, 47% of current consumers of cloud infrastructure services indicate that they use cloud servers, such as the delivery model that SunGard Enterprise Cloud Services has implemented with its longstanding customer base 2. Figure 2. Cloud Infrastructures Currently Being Used Which of the following cloud infrastructure services does your organization currently use? (Percent of respondents, N=167, multiple responses accepted) Cloud storage (i.e., storage capacity on demand) 57% Disaster recovery service 51% Cloud servers (i.e., CPUs on demand) 47% Database instances on demand 40% 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% The opportunity to consume server-centric cloud computing services is very similar to the early opportunity of server virtualization initiatives most implementations started with test and development. In fact, companies have already begun to take advantage of the benefits of this delivery model by deploying both test and development workloads as well as production workloads on these cloud-based resources (see Figure 3) 3. It is also important to note that more than half (52%) of respondent organizations lean on cloud computing services for a more sophisticated model of variable workloads and consuming capacity based on workload spikes and capacity demands. 2 Source: ESG Research Report, Public Cloud Computing Trends, to be published March 2012. 3 Ibid.
Services Brief: SunGard Enterprise Cloud Services 3 Figure 3. Current Cloud Server Use Cases For which of the following purposes does your organization use cloud servers (i.e., cloud compute services, CPUs on demand, etc.)? (Percent of respondents, N=79, multiple responses accepted) Test and development 68% Run production applications 66% Additional resource to accommodate spikes in workload demands 52% Use as temporary compute resources for time-limited projects 46% Risk Mitigation It is well recognized that security and control over data are IT decision-makers two leading concerns with regard to cloud computing. SunGard addresses these by offering multiple data protection layers. One is Managed Multi-site Availability, which includes high-availability and failover options to meet recovery-point objectives (RPOs) and recoverytime objectives (RTOs). High availability includes a fully redundant architecture across diverse geographies that can be paired with SunGard intrusion detection and geographic load-balancing management services. SunGard s Managed Multi-Site Fail-Over is a warm restart option in which a secondary cloud instance is used for failover. This option promises a 30-minute RPO and four-hour RTO. Resiliency and Reliability 0% 20% 40% 60% 80% Performance and reliability are also high priority areas of concern in the cloud. This speaks to SunGard s core strengths: depth of experience and breadth of product offerings. SunGard has been providing continuous availability solutions for mission-critical business applications for more than 30 years and extends its support to cloud service as well. Covered by a 99.95% infrastructure uptime SLA, Enterprise Cloud Services is an infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) solution based on an enterprise-class cloud architecture, which includes on-demand, virtualized Vblock infrastructure and application availability, as well as built-in resiliency. IT organizations indicate that the infrastructure underlying cloud services is an important factor when considering these offerings. Figure 4 drives this point home, with 10% of the respondents indicating it is critical and an additional 34% stating that it is very important 4. 4 Ibid.
Services Brief: SunGard Enterprise Cloud Services 4 Figure 4. Importance of Underlying Infrastructure Technology in Cloud Services In general, how important is the specific underlying infrastructure technology used to deliver a cloud service when you are considering those services? (Percent of respondents, N=553) Not important, 11% Don't know, 1% Critical, 10% Very important, 34% Somewhat important, 44% Compliance Maintenance Many organizations struggle to keep pace with governance, risk, and compliance, which can be very expensive. SunGard s virtualized cloud environments are built to be in step with regulatory requirements and industry standards, and they are completely auditable. The company s deep compliance expertise helps customers deal with the many regulatory issues that they face. For example, SunGard s data centers: Savings Follow the ITIL v3 framework. Are included in its annual SSAE 16 Type II audit. Are subject to certification following the ISO 2000-1 standard. Protect key systems and network connections inside SunGard s data centers according to key industry standards such as FISMA/NIST, PCI-DSS, and HIPAA. Cost containment is a key objective for companies considering the switch from in-house IT to cloud services. These organizations hope to shift budgets away from capital IT expenditures to an operating expenditure model, while also reducing in-house labor spending on day-to-day IT management. Over the past four years, ESG has witnessed companies increasing the usage of cloud computing services as an alternative to in-house applications and compute capacity as a cost-reduction or containment strategy. Cloud computing services enable IT to maintain momentum of projects and avoid postponing them or canceling them altogether. An IT View An IT-driven organization can leverage SunGard s Enterprise Cloud Services to begin capturing the benefits of cloud computing. Many companies have already embarked on the path to the cloud by hosting physical servers, firewalls,
Services Brief: SunGard Enterprise Cloud Services 5 switches, and peripherals for some time. However, as these companies continue to grow, they face a choice: either invest in an update to the physical IT environment or move over to the cloud. Many organizations begin a cost benefit analysis at this point. Many end up choosing the latter, and SunGard can help make the move. Cloud computing has many benefits that include services consolidation, cost reduction, and optimization of staff. Today, SunGard s Enterprise Cloud Services provide an enterprise-grade, multi-tenant Vblock architecture that contains built-in security and redundancy. IT organizations can draw on a pool of memory, storage, virtual CPUs, security, and backup on demand to access reporting and rapid provisioning. Customers can leverage additional integrated managed services such as SAP, Citrix, Exchange, IDS, and more all managed by SunGard. How to Get Started The IT industry is at the very beginning of its migration to virtualized cloud services. Any company considering the move must conduct thorough due diligence just as they did before adopting server virtualization. They need to look at test and development workloads from the very beginning, so that they can gain experience and confidence in the cloud service model. In short, they must: Identify IT resource constraints and alternative IT consumption models. Develop a plan with application and line-of-business owners. Discover ways to build a long-term relationship with a service provider. SunGard can assist through a customer s cloud lifecycle. This ranges from cloud readiness assessment, migration services, and optimization. The assessment evaluates server, operating system, and application dependencies along with network, security, storage, compliance, and financial requirements that will help ensure a successful deployment. Over time, ESG fully expects that, as companies gain experience and confidence, they will begin to transition their business- and mission-critical IT workloads over to the cloud. The Bigger Truth Companies want better, more efficient, and less expensive ways to develop new projects, extend their IT services, and improve disaster avoidance. As a result, the IT industry is: Increasing its spending in 2012 in cloud services. Broadening its cloud consumption across storage capacity, disaster recovery, and cloud servers. Shifting the use cases toward production workloads and more sophisticated elastic consumption models. Identifying workloads that fit within the security, reliability, and resiliency requirements of the cloud provider. SunGard s Enterprise Cloud Services has the potential to be a viable and sensible way to achieve all of these ends. The company s experience, knowledge, and investment in technology such as Vblock demonstrate its commitment to the success of cloud computing services for its customers. As is evident from ESG s research, companies are always looking for cost-reduction strategies, and cloud computing is poised to play a significant role in helping them do so. It s important that businesses identify and invest in a strategic cloud service provider such as SunGard that can deliver value across a wide range of services. SunGard Enterprise Cloud services are an obvious next step for existing SunGard customers and any business considering the benefits of cloud computing that wants to work with a company that has long-term experience in the business. All trademark names are property of their respective companies. Information contained in this publication has been obtained by sources The Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) considers to be reliable but is not warranted by ESG. This publication may contain opinions of ESG, which are subject to change from time to time. This publication is copyrighted by The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. Any reproduction or redistribution of this publication, in whole or in part, whether in hard-copy format, electronically, or otherwise to persons not authorized to receive it, without the express consent of The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc., is in violation of U.S. copyright law and will be subject to an action for civil damages and, if applicable, criminal prosecution. Should you have any questions, please contact ESG Client Relations at 508.482.0188.