Cloud Computing means many things to many people. It excites, motivates, and even scares some. But what does it mean to you?
The advantages of cloud computing have been touted again and again - from flexibility, speed, versatility, convenience, and cost effective to green, secure and scalable. But what makes cloud computing so interesting is that everyone has different thoughts and views around what it really does for them and means to them.
So first things first, what is cloud computing? At
BlueLock we describe it in terms of 5 major things: on demand self-service, broad network access, resource pooling, rapid elasticity and measured service. It is provided in three different service models: software-as-a-service (SaaS), platform-as-a-service (PaaS) and infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS). (BlueLock does IaaS.)
But what's the real value of the cloud? These are the major values our clients have seen:
- Transitioning IT infrastructure costs from Capex to Opex
- Opportunity to lower overall costs
- Better match expenses to revenue
- Rapid provisioning (speed to market)
- Competitive advantage
But again, I must ask, what does cloud computing mean to you?
Its no surprise to hear
cloud computing tops another top ten list, but this is a good one.
The news alert reports that "Gartner defines a strategic technology as one with the potential for significant impact on the enterprise in the next three years. Factors that denote significant impact include a high potential for disruption to IT or the business, the need for a major dollar investment, or the risk of being late to adopt."
This year “cloud computing” bumped “virtualization” for the number one spot on Gartner’s top 10 strategic technologies list. It should be noted that Gartner’s report is referring to virtualized computing environments (i.e. VMware, etc.) within the organization, as opposed to the virtualization that is inherent to cloud-based services delivered via the public Internet.
Another recent
report on
private clouds acknowledged that companies will more than likely spend more money on internal (or private clouds) cloud computing environments than with public cloud providers. BlueLock fits in well with this mix because with our
private cloud offering we are able to deploy a private/internal cloud within your organization, but the technology allows for the private cloud to connect to the BlueLock
public cloud environment for spillover or other needs.
Here is the full list of the top strategies from 2009 and for 2010:Gartner’s top 10 strategic technologies for 2009 were:
1. Virtualization
2. Cloud computing
3. Servers (beyond blades)
4. Web oriented architectures
5. Enterprise mashups
6. Specialized systems
7. Social software / networking
8. Unified communications
9. Business intelligence
10. Green IT
The research firm’s top 10 strategic technologies for 2010 include:
1. Cloud computing
2. Advanced analytics
3. Client computing
4. IT for green
5. Reshaping the data center
6. Social computing
7. Security
8. Flash memory
9. Virtualization
10. Mobile applications
To find out more about BlueLock's public cloud and private cloud solutions contact us
here.
To read the original release, click
here.
Of course
cloud computing would be the top technology trend to watch in 2010, that’s not a surprise at all. As we all know, the economy hasn’t bounced back too much, so the focus is still on getting the biggest bang for your buck and making the most economical investments and that will lead us right in to 2010 when the chief issues will again be around the economy and cloud computing.
Brian Dooley points out in his article “Top tech: the trends to watch in 2010,” “the economy has brought about industry consolidation and re-evaluation of expenditure which have, in turn, affected corporate spending plans, upgrade cycles, areas of interest for new technologies and willingness to undertake large, new projects.” It is this realm of re-evaluation and decreased corporate spending ability where companies are charged to do more with less. The companies still need to grow, innovate and expand (or simply stay afloat if that’s the goal) and it can be very hard to grow certain areas when you have to cut others that have a huge impact on the business.
Companies have taken a long hard look at IT spending in the past year which is a big reason why cloud computing has received the attention is has so far. No longer can IT departments afford to purchase expensive state-of-the-art capital on demand. It costs money to buy it and more money to manage it. But how can the company support its efforts without the IT to back it, especially if the company’s main products are tied to that infrastructure - an infrastructure that has to grow if the company is going to grow?
Cloud computing.
What else will be hot in 2010?
- Advanced analytics
- Client computing
- Green IT
- Reshaping the data center
- Social networking
- Security – activity monitoring
- Flash memory
- Virtualization for availability
- Mobile applications
Funny, lots of these are related to cloud computing in one way or another…
Dooley's original article.
There are a million reasons to go green these days and economic pressure to do so (or to hold back). So here comes a great reason to go green in your data center (or data center provider): enter, cloud computing. Enterprise IT accounts for up to 40% of a company’s energy requirements. Cutting back in that area could lead to a huge decrease in your organizations “carbon footprint.”
According to Forrester, over 40% of people in IT departments believe energy efficiency and equipment recycling are important factors to consider (go Earth!) and about 65% believe that reduction of energy-related operating costs is the driving factor surrounding the implementation of green IT.
In the traditional data center, large and small you’ve got servers requiring massive amounts of cooling power and electricity to keep them running properly. More importantly, those servers are running at low utilization levels (20% or lower) but still require full power to cool them. What’s that mean? Lots of wasted energy, basically. You’ve got redundant hardware, memory, network devices and power supplies to keep everything chugging along. So how do we make this situation better?
MODERNIZE! It’s all about cloud computing and virtualization. And what’s it do? Reduces the number of servers you need (i.e. reduces the amount of space, electricity & cooling required as well) or gets rid of almost all of your in-house data center requirements if you so decide to outsource everything (most people would keep some of their stuff in-house, and that’s recommended for the most part anyway). And that’s a great step towards decreasing you energy needs and dependency, making your office green.
Lots of companies think going green sounds great, and trendy – same with their thoughts on cloud computing (very trendy and sounds pretty cool), but it’s not about being green, trendy or cool – it’s about saving money (and Mother Earth at the same time). Virtualization allows you to partition physical hardware into multiple logical “boxes” each running on its own operating system and network connectivity in a “sandbox.” Additional standby servers are redundant, thanks to the rapid provisioning capabilities in the cloud and best of all, you can host more application with less servers. Higher utilization with lower costs!
With a
cloud computing solution like
BlueLock’s you can cut your infrastructure costs by $50,000 a year or more and disaster recovery, another added bonus, becomes just a fraction of the cost than in traditional DR environments (savings are usually about 40%).
So what are you waiting for?
Go green and cut your IT costs.
The green movement has lost a little bit of its fervor with all of the economic problems going on. However, BlueLock still thinks being green is great when it comes to IT infrastructure. Not only does being green help save the environment, but it saves your company money. With the economic situation in hand, green (cloud) computing is a win-win game all companies should be playing.
So how do we make our data center green? Two major things:
VMware virtual servers and
HP LeftHand SAN. BlueLock has realized a strong "green technology" benefit in terms of reduced power and cooling consumption and space requirements.
BlueLock CTO
Pat O'Day explains:
"There is absolutely a green efficiency that would be impossible to achieve without the HP P4000 SAN in concert with virtualization. We have 500 virtual servers running in a footprint of one or two cabinets that would otherwise take 10 cabinets and much more power and cooling capacity."
BlueLock has created a green, scalable, cost-efficient and
100% virtual platform by utiilizing the VMware vCloud and HP LeftHand P4000 SAN solution.
As we
become more energy conscious is Cloud Computing and use of dedicated hosting a "Green Solution?"
Unlike a data center serving an
individual business, in the cloud excess capacity becomes available to serve other
demands. In a way, the cloud becomes more efficient as more companies
join the cloud. While each company operates in a secure self contained
environment, they benefit from a shared “engine” to drive their process.
Fewer overall
resources are necessary to meet demand, so in essence, cloud computing is an ecologically
sound, green solution
