www.fusionalliance.com
CLOUD 101: LET’S
REMOVE THE
COMPLEXITY
Author: M
ark Mikula, Architect - Cloud Services
So you’re new to cloud. It sounds
scary and intimidating. There are many
people saying that companies should
switch to cloud. People talking about
the benefits and how it works. People
who say it’s the future. You’ve done
some web searching to find out what
exactly the cloud is. There’s a lot of
word-heavy terminology used
to describe it because it is
synonymously used to describe the
benefits of the cloud, not really what
the cloud is or does.
What is cloud? The cloud is a method
where you are provided IT resources
as a service. This means servers,
networks, platforms and software. A
provider takes ownership of all related
resources and processes, and you pay
them a monthly fee.
If the cloud is nothing more than
servers being hosted for you, then why
go cloud? After all, you’ve already made
a heavy investment in infrastructure.
There shouldn’t be a need to switch
over to having a cloud provider host
your machines when you’ve already
paid for them, right?
The difference lies within the service
that is being provided to you. Cloud
providers bestow an easy-to-use,
configurable way to spin up servers,
networks and storage on demand,
quickly. They can be in charge of
your hardware, your data and all of
the processes related to it (disaster
recovery, maintenance, capacity
management, etc.) so you have time to
focus on your business.
The important benefits that you gain
when switching to have your servers
and services hosted on the cloud are:
• Agility
• Scalability
• Reliability
• Security
• Cost
Agility
Think about how much time it takes
to provision a full application to your
environment. You would first have to
discover each tier of the application
(web, application, data, etc.) and
determine each hardware need.
Assuming you don’t have a capacity
to produce a large application,
you would have to go through the
request and procurement process to
obtain the hardware. This requires
you to very closely right-size the
capital expenditure so you don’t
overpay for the hardware.
When it’s done, you’ll have to
install the servers in the datacenter,
deploy the virtualization software
to the machine and start to build
the machines as stated in the
specification. Now, even if your
company is one of the few that
diligently buys and overallocates
hardware to compensate future
capacity trends, we’re still looking
at an inability to rapidly provision
servers when a business unit
needs it.
One of the characteristics of cloud
that makes it so appealing is the
ability to quickly provision on
demand. No up-front investment, no
additional labor cost. Simply select
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a server size, an operating system and
other configurations you’re looking for,
and the cloud can create that server
for you in minutes. Agility means time,
and the less time you have to spend on
workload tasks, the more time you can
work on the more important things that
deliver value to the business.
Scalability
Determining capacity remains an
elusive task for many companies.
The resources you need are predicted
through trends of what has been used.
The problem with predictions are that
they are not always right. Even more
important, it’s very hard to acquire
additional hardware and resources
using predictions. As a matter of
fact, many infrastructures choose to
downgrade servers rather than buy
more hardware.
The cloud cuts through this with
(seemingly) unlimited resources that
you can pool and use. Need 5,000
more web servers across the world
for a few weeks to handle your Black
Friday sales? No problem with cloud.
The ability to never have to worry about
maximum capacity and to focus on
right-sizing existing resources becomes
the de-facto standard with cloud.
Reliability and Security
If you don’t own your servers, and your
data is no longer in house, how do you
work through strategies like business
continuity and disaster recovery? How
do you control risk and cybersecurity?
for the biggest of businesses, only to
get hacked and have countless lawsuits
on their hands? With cloud providers,
you own your data, it is secure and
their disaster recovery service-level
agreements (SLAs) are unmatched.
first foray into the cloud. With flagship
SaaS products such as Office 365 and
Salesforce CRM, enterprise products
that can offer true cloud solutions
represent the majority of growth in the
competitive cloud marketplace.
Cost
This section was so massive that we
created a whitepaper that focuses just
on that. I won’t spoil it for you, but the
fact that it’s listed as a benefit here
must mean some good things, right?
Download the Cloud vs. On-premises
Costs whitepaper.
For any enterprise looking for to
procure new enterprise applications,
SaaS is generally the first stop on the
journey. While potentially sacrificing
some flexibility, organizations receive
an operationalized subscription
service that is available the moment
you are ready.
Types of Cloud
Wait, there’s more than one type of
cloud? Yes, and each of them are
enhancements to the last. We’ll
describe them below:
Platform as a Service (PaaS)
For organizations that leverage and
build applications, PaaS cloud offerings
offer the best of the cloud and the best
of customized solutions.
• On-premises (private cloud)
• Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
• Platform as a Service (PaaS)
• Software as a Service (SaaS)
Software as a Service (SaaS)
SaaS offerings are turnkey solutions
in which a cloud provider gives you
access to targeted application services.
Your company is not required to install,
configure or deploy any infrastructure.
The provider does all of it. For many
organizations, SaaS represents the
With PaaS, your development teams
focus on one thing: developing the
application solutions that add value to
your business, and nothing that does
not. Your team members can focus
on code, data and integration, and
the infrastructure is left to the cloud
provider. The advantage of PaaS is
that your teams can get the flexibility
of custom solutions with the
infrastructure and management
capabilities of public cloud.
This boils down to trust. Cloud
providers have spent a lot of time to
pass security and regulatory agencies,
like PCI, HIPPA and Sarbanes-Oxley.
They also have a large amount of
resources dedicated to keeping and
securing data. After all, why would a
provider go through all of the money
they’ve spent on preparing the cloud
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Cloud 101: Let’s Remove the Complexity
2
PaaS applications are also uniquely
valuable because they offer the
following functionality:
• U
nlimited, push-button scaling
without deploying new code
• T ransparent and independent
infrastructure patching and updates
• S
implified distribution among many
application servers
• D
eployment capabilities that allow
your company to deploy as many
environments as you desire, pay for
the temporary usage and then scale
back when the resources are not used
• U
nified management portal
and application performance
management (APM)
PaaS applications represent the
greatest Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)
and fastest time to market for custom
solutions and are valuable for both the
startup and enterprise. PaaS makes
the development, testing and
deployment of applications simple
and cost-effective.
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
In an IaaS environment, you’re simply
moving your virtual machines from
your datacenter to the cloud. The
impact of doing so is that you will not
have to worry about capacity or the
cost of factors like cooling or
equipment. You are not required to
move all your machines to the cloud.
In fact, most organizations select a
combination of servers hosted in cloud
and some in their own datacenter for
moving to the cloud – and that’s what’s
called hybrid cloud.
Selecting which servers move is
essentially a business decision based
on considerations like cost, hardware
lease renewals, or software licensing
requirements. For example, if App A is
running on old hardware that needs
replaced, why not move it to the cloud
instead of purchasing new hardware?
Your server will still be the same as it was
before, with the same configurations and
settings; nothing has changed except for
where the server exists.
Automation and self-service create
tremendous efficiencies for IT
personnel, freeing up their time to
innovate in order to drive business
decisions, rather than spending time on
repeated processes and firefighting.
On-Premises (Private Cloud)
How is private cloud (one where you
own all the resources) different from
a typical datacenter? A datacenter
doesn’t provide those resources like a
service, whereas a private cloud does,
with key elements being automation
and self-service capabilities.
Conclusion
Now you know a little more about
cloud, in very real terms. That’s the first
step to start making a decision on what
you can actually use the cloud for and
when. Companies move to the cloud for
agility in an ever-changing world.
You can leverage your existing hardware
investment to give your business the
same experience as using a cloud
provider. This still provides some of
the business value and benefits as
a true public cloud, but without a
huge expenditure. That’s one main
reason why a business would want
to make their datacenter a private
cloud. They’ve already spent money to
have that expensive datacenter onpremises. They may want the benefits
of the cloud, but they can’t throw those
dollars out the window. The private
cloud is the answer to gain cloud
benefits now, but not get rid of your
existing datacenter investment. As the
equipment and licenses expire, the
transition to a hybrid or public cloud
makes more sense.
While some organizations are still
swamped managing their infrastructure
and IT, others have moved to the
cloud and are able to focus on driving
business. This provides an unmatched
competitive edge, and with the cloud
market continuing to grow in leaps and
bounds, businesses that don’t stay
current in this technology revolution will
be hard pressed to remain competitive.
Cloud is a huge proposition, but Fusion
has the expertise to help you get there.
We’ll help you to understand the best
strategies that will work specifically for
your business and lead the way to that
big cloud in the sky with our team of
architects and business professionals.
You can transform your datacenter into
a private cloud by meeting two goals:
• M
ake your datacenter capable of
providing self-service so that staff
can request servers, infrastructure,
or any other IT request through a
centralized solution, such as a portal
• A
utomate your datacenter so that
servers, infrastructure and other IT
resources are provisioned, managed
and deprovisioned without IT
intervention
[email protected]
©2016 Fusion Alliance. All Rights Reserved.
Cloud 101: Let’s Remove the Complexity
3