UNIFYING THE HYBRID CLOUD The Emergence of the Hybrid Cloud: A Challenge for Enterprise, an Opportunity for Managed Service Providers The growing adoption of cloud computing, driven by the promise of increased IT agility and better IT economics, has been accompanied by a continuous evolution in deployment strategies. Hybrid, multi-cloud and inter-cloud architectures are now emerging as the preferred deployment approach for most enterprises today. This is because they make it possible to combine and distribute services and resources from diverse cloud platforms and providers, leveraging the assets traditionally maintained in on-premises data centers and private clouds, for enhanced distribution and accessibility of application platforms, better performance, and ultimately better IT economics. CLOUDSCAPE SOLUTION BRIEF The considerable growth in hybrid cloud computing has been reflected in numerous independent market research forecasts released over the past year. According to IDC, more than 65% of enterprise IT organizations will commit to hybrid cloud technologies before 2016. A recent Equinix survey of more than 650 IT leaders in the United States, United Kingdom, Singapore, Germany, Brazil and Australia reached a similar conclusion, finding that more than three fourths planned to implement multi-cloud architectures in 2015. Technology Business Research is predicting a 50% growth rate for the hybrid cloud in 2015. The appeal of hybrid cloud architectures brings a new set of challenges. Managing these environments - which are characterized by diverse technologies, interfaces, services, and business relationships - are inherently complex. This is compounded by a significant lack of interoperability standards between different clouds and cloud vendors. Making applications work together across cloud platforms requires specialized tools, APIs and custom workarounds. These challenges must be addressed without compromising security and application performance, and without overreliance on manual IT resources and processes to configure, provision, monitor, and tune distributed cloud platforms. The Solution A Breakthrough Offering of Hybrid Cloud as a Service Enterprise companies need a dual functionality solution that provides workload creation and management as well as inter-cloud connectivity. This combination wasn t available until now. Siaras cloudscape is the only application providing automation for workload management and inter-cloud connectivity making the hybrid cloud offering ever more compelling for enterprise companies.
Enterprise companies rely on Managed Service Providers to Save Time and Money The complexity and degree of manual effort needed to manage distributed hybrid clouds can impose a significant burden on enterprise IT and Devops resources. Most enterprise IT departments are finding an economic advantage in outsourcing these operations to Managed Service Providers (MSP) who provide comprehensive IT solutions (including hardware, software, IT staffing and processes) for their enterprise clients. New Software as a Service (SaaS) offering based on hybrid cloud enablement combined with inter-cloud connectivity for the enterprise represent a promising business opportunity for service providers that need to replace lost revenue streams from the emergence of public IaaS providers while continuing to grow demand for existing core services such as network connectivity, colocation, and hosting services. A growing number of system integrators, who have traditionally provided IT implementation services, are also beginning to offer post-implementation managed cloud services as a way of generating extended revenue streams. Likewise, a number of value-added resellers that provide custom IT solutions by combining commercial software with customized templates, along with specialized services and training, are also entering the managed cloud services market. Most enterprise cloud landscapes, however, are unique, requiring the service provider to design, implement, and support each environment as a one off. The lack of automated, hybrid or multi-cloud orchestration tools and repeatable production code templates, is forcing service providers to rely heavily on expensive, ad hoc, human engineering resources. This in turn makes it extremely difficult to deliver profitable cloud-enablement services to a large and diverse enterprise customer base. The option of developing automated, hybrid cloud workload management services in house is impractical for most service providers, system integrators, and value added resellers. Although many of these service-oriented businesses have software developers on staff, their business models and core-competencies are generally not well suited for the design and development of commercial software for diverse enterprise end user clients - who increasingly are demanding, and expecting, self-help services.
Siaras cloudscape - Automating the Orchestration of Hybrid Clouds Recognizing the needs of enterprise customers and the service providers they rely on, Siaras has developed cloudscape, a production-class, hybrid cloud management platform that federates cloud services at the infrastructure layer across a variety of private and public clouds. Within the context of hybrid and multi-cloud, cloudscape uniquely includes the provisioning and management of the inter-coud connectivity as part of the overall Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) offering. The Siaras cloudscape platform provides the function of orchestrator or cloud of clouds. MSP s now have the opportunity to offer a unique SaaS solution that provides both workload provisioning and management as well as inter-cloud connectivity. The major functional attributes of Siaras cloudscape include the following: A single, extensible platform with a centralized dashboard and common API that normalizes services at the Infrastructure layer across distributed, disparate clouds. End user self-service to enable IT operations staff and system administrators (who provision users, hardware, WAN connections, define policies and priorities) to control assets not physically residing in the enterprise data center. Automation of tasks to ensure policy-compliance for each virtual data center in a multi-cloud infrastructure. For example, specific projects or virtual data centers can be assigned to specific geographies. Management of the inter-cloud connectivity
For service providers and their enterprise customers, Siaras cloudscape provides: Flexibility without complexity - A single interface and common API facilitates the federation of any combination of disparate public, private and virtual private clouds and inter-cloud connectivity. Service providers can offer their enterprise customers a SaaS solution with the flexibility to tailor the right cloud for the right application, without the complexity of multiple management consoles. Single business relationship In addition to removing the technical complexities associated with hybrid clouds, service providers also add value with cloudscape by insulating their enterprise customers from the burden of establishing and maintaining multiple IaaS vendor relationships. Contracts, terminology, and payment schedules are consolidated. Lower costs Automated, workload management and inter-cloud connectivity dramatically reduces the level of manual time and effort associated with hybrid cloud deployment and operations. Additional cost effectiveness is achieved through more efficient utilization of hardware, software, and network resources. Policy compliance A policy framework assists and automates the decision process of how virtual data center projects can be created as well as how workloads and related assets can be managed and interconnected. Public cloud bursting With cloudscape service provider customers have the ability to dynamically extend, or "burst" their enterprise customers cloud footprint from private or managed private data centers to public cloud data centers. Multiple enterprise customers can deterministically share dedicated capacity into public cloud data centers. Protection from vendor lock-in Siaras cloudscape is based on extensions to OpenStack. This provides service providers an open platform for developing value-added enhancements, and protects enterprise customers from being locked into a proprietary vendor solution. Incremental revenue By providing SaaS offerings based on hybrid cloud enablement with inter cloud connectivity gives MSP s a promising business opportunity
Getting Started If you are a service provider, system integrator, value-added reseller, or an enterprise IT professional seeking to reduce the cost and complexity of managing hybrid cloud environments and inter-cloud connectivity, contact us info@siaras.com. About Us Siaras is a software company that brings automated orchestration to the complex world of hybrid clouds. Our flagship product, Siaras cloudscape, is the industry s only fully automated, Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) hybrid cloud management solution designed for Managed Service Providers (MSPs) and the enterprise customers they serve. By focusing our hybrid cloud unified solutions on the same IaaS layer that MSPs address, we protect their value-added investments and enable them to grow new revenue streams. Siaras was founded in 2013 by a team of industry veterans dedicated to improving and simplifying cloud computing now and in the future. For more information, visit us at www.siaras.com. Siaras, Inc. 650.622.3534 www.siaras.com info@siaras.com Twitter: @siaras_inc 2014, Siaras, Inc.