best practices for the cloud

Cloud Best Practices: what does it mean really? Judith S. Hurwitz

President

What are companies doing?

Public Clouds Capacity on demand Test/develop Short term projects Departmental projects Collaborations

Virtualization Server consolidation Improving efficiency Desktop efficiency

Private Clouds Internal purpose built

environment Improvement of existing

data center automation

Hybrid Environment Combination of public

services with private cloud Some test/dev; some

SaaS; some private cloud services

What does this mean to your business?

What is the Cloud all about?

An economic model based on defined repeatable workloads Scaling workloads supporting highly predictable workloads

(email, storage, repeatable service-based applications) Environment optimized – hardware, power, operating system,

management framework) Self-service – provisioning and billing Scale up and down

A service management discipline Managing and monitoring performance, availability, security, and

compliance. Monitoring quality and reliability

View from Top Management

Public clouds allow businesses to benefit from technology without buying more hardware and support services

IT takes too long to execute It can respond more quickly

to changing business needs Google and Amazon can do

things mostIT organization can’t do

It can cut expenses dramatically

Focuses on innovation

The Reality of the Public Cloud

Good for highly scalable, simple, predictable workloads

Appropriate for services based models (payment services, customer management)

Costs can be high as companies scale

Are you locked in?

Compliance can be an issue

How trusted is the brand?

When do companies consider Private clouds?

You have a virtualized, economical data center already

Your business is IT-centric You are a service provider

to your customers You need to support a

community site You can create a revenue

model for services You must support a

dynamic partner ecosystem?

Your compliance requirements are stringent

Clouds will be Hybrid

The world is never black and white – shades of gray

Organizations have a huge variety workloads to support

Organizations must support lots of legacy hardware, operating systems, customized applications

Public Clouds are most effective for highly scalable, lower risk, predictable workloads

Compliance and regulations will help dictate decisions

The Front Office Implications for the Cloud

Shifting focus from basic back office needs (develop/testing, capacity, etc.)

New focus on innovative business processes

Focus on customer experience in new ways

Is it really about security?

How secure is the cloud?

How secure is your data center?

How will you secure endpoints?

Can you track compliance in a hybrid world?

How will you manage cloud computing?

Do you have a service management strategy across your data center, public cloud services, and private cloud?

What type of SLA does your provider offer? Read the fine print

What is your governance model?

What type of quality of service do your customers, suppliers, and customers expect and demand?

Cloud computing requires planning

What is your cloud strategy? Where should you start? Which workloads are most

economical for the cloud? Can you trust your cloud

provider? Can you move your workload

from one provider to another? Where does your data live, how

is it secured, and how is it governed?

Who owns your data?

Cloud computing requires planning

How will you integrate data and applications across clouds and the data center?

What is the way to get started? What is your security and compliance

strategy? What type of SLAs do you need both

internally and externally? How will you manage your cloud assets as

they expand? How will you monitor the performance of

suppliers?

Interoperability?© Steve Carter

Elements to Create a Secure Cloud

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Thank you!

Judith.hurwitz@hurwitz.com