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Transforming Clouds into Competitive Advantages
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Forget about “promise” and “potential.” How do you exploit cloud computing for real profits?
 Cloud computing certainly gets more than its share of media buzz. And rightfully so. But so far, the discussion has focused on what cloud computing means to the future of computing. Let’s come back to Earth for a moment. As an industry we need to stop talking about the potential and start focusing on the practicalities of cloud computing. Rather than extolling the innovation of cloud computing, Sun is investing the time to educate organisations on how to put the concepts of cloud computing into practical use — right now. Australian plans for cloud computingEarlier this year Sun carried out research into Australian business plans for cloud computing. More than 250 IT executives across Australia completed the research. More than one third of respondents (34 per cent) will implement a cloud in the next 12 months, in spite of the current economic outlook and reduced IT budgets. Across the board, security is viewed as the top challenge facing organisations when implementing a cloud, with 21 per cent of respondents putting it at the top of a list of 10 possible factors in Sun’s research. The second highest challenge highlighted by the research is the need to address virtualisation in the business (16 per cent), followed by implementing automated provisioning (11 per cent). 55 per cent of respondents are more likely to implement a public or hybrid public/private cloud. Just 45 per cent of all respondents are seeking a private cloud for their organisation. Public or private cloud?If used correctly, cloud computing can allow an organisation to differentiate itself. In order to benefit from cloud computing it is essential that an organisation evaluate its IT strategy and choose a cloud that fits.
No matter which cloud is right for your organisation an important step is to develop the policies and processes that will surround the cloud. How employees interact with the cloud, who has access, and how regulatory constraints will restrict a business are factors that need to be evaluated. Introducing the Sun Cloud and the benefits to youTo help businesses achieve cloud computing we announced the building of the Sun Cloud in March. The Sun Cloud is a public compute and storage infrastructure that delivers commercial network services to the entire free software community. Sun’s open, network-centric approach coupled with optimised systems, software and services provides the critical building blocks for private and public cloud offerings. Many organisations already have a lot of the building blocks in place:
The Sun Cloud will be built on open source platforms — from ZFS and Crossbow, to MySQL and GlassFish. We currently have more than 4,000 developers hard at work on these enabling elements and a 20-year history of network-scale software innovation. By building the cloud on open source technology, Sun is able to deliver radically reduced costs by avoiding proprietary storage and networking products. The Sun Cloud will be open, which means that developers can freely build on top of the cloud services to deliver mass market products without the fear of lock-in from the emerging proprietary cloud vendors. In order to allow organisations to make the most of both a public and private cloud, the Sun Cloud can also be deployed behind a corporate firewall. Sun is commercialising its public cloud by deploying it in private datacentres for those organisations that can’t use a public cloud. No matter what your IT strategy is, Sun’s clouds, either private or public, can meet your organisation’s needs. Additional Resources
If you want more information on topics covered in this issue of Inner Circle, please contact me. Yours sincerely, Andrew Goodlace | ||
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