FEATURE VIRTUALISATION
The Benefits of Moving to the Cloud Sky Plus By Len Padilla, Senior Director of Engineering, NTT Europe
I still remember the days when PCs had space for floppy discs and CDs got scratched or lost. These physical commodities were quickly surpassed by the virtualisation of assets like sound and video. Now all it takes is the click of a mouse to download your favourite album, film or software from ‘the cloud’. These once popular physical transactions have now been virtualised, and so too has the way businesses consume IT. Virtualisation and cloud computing
The growth of cloud and virtualisation is dramatically changing the way corporate IT clients work, bringing the advent of ‘IT as a service’, where more power is given to the hosting provider and end-user, leaving the IT department to focus on strategy, research and development.
are key elements which underpin ‘IT as a service’, although the terms shouldn’t be used completely interchangeably, as one is simply the logical progression of the other. Cloud computing wouldn’t be possible without the virtualisation of physical servers, but not all virtualisation is necessarily computing in the cloud. Virtualisation allows businesses to consolidate many functions onto a smaller number of servers, without having to go to something like a mainframe. This not only reduces the number of physical servers needed, but often cuts the number of people
needed to manage them and keep the hosting environment up and running. Fundamentally, it’s a much more efficient use of computer resources. Cloud computing refers to the
functionalities and interfaces enabled by virtualisation. Rather than an IT manager just taking workloads and deploying them on physical servers in the traditional way, the cloud environment gives users the ability to self-service and auto-provide. This allows organisations to be a lot more flexible, and a lot more agile, fundamentally changing the way business is done within an IT department. As companies move towards cloud
computing, their journey typically involves three different steps. Firstly, they use virtualisation to become more efficient. They can consolidate their workloads onto fewer servers, burn less power and potentially reduce their overheads. Then, they’ll move into a stage where they become ‘pro users of virtualisation’. This will allow them to be more agile, so they’ll move workloads
around more efficiently, and make better use of the human resources, as well the technical infrastructure, meaning less IT staff time is spent answering requests for extra resources as end-users can now do this themselves. Once an organisation has experienced these benefits they consider the full move to cloud computing, which dramatically alters the way IT is run within their organisation. Once IT is in the cloud, it truly becomes a service. A complete move into the cloud also
allows a company to appreciate all the benefits of virtualisation. Individuals no long ask IT to solve every tiny issue, instead they lean on them for resources. When IT has provided that resource, the individual will have an automated way to bring up and down their own virtual servers that carry their workload, manage their users, manage who can do what on that platform, and so on. These are processes we are all quite used to using when we visit consumer services that are in the cloud, such as Gmail and Facebook. Here, people log in, they do what they need to do and they don’t worry about the underlying infrastructure.
Changing your mindset
So what does an organisation need to do to move into the cloud? The degree of infrastructural change depends on whether they want the cloud on the premises within their own data centre, or if they’d prefer a service provider managed it. There are lots of things to consider if a company wants to keep control of the cloud, and specific readiness programmes exist to help businesses through this process. It’s safe to say that most companies who don’t already have a cloud infrastructure internally will need some sort of technical upgrade. However, as much as an organisation
The degree of infrastructural change depends on whether you want the cloud on your premises, or if you would prefer a service provider to manage it.
32 NETCOMMS Volume I, Issue 4 2011
needs the right hardware to make the switch, they’ll also need to upgrade their mindset. To really get the most from the cloud, whether offsite or onsite, IT experts need to change the way they view their business. Much of this comes down to the issue of control. Up to now, IT departments have had absolute control of all operations within
www.netcommseurope.com
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60