Solution Provider Shows
IT Pros How to Avoid Common Cloud Computing Pitfalls
Farmington Hills, MI, August 23,
2011 – The term “cloud” has become one of the most
commonly used and most often misunderstood words in IT today.
According to Logicalis (http://www.us.logicalis.com/),
an international provider of integrated information and
communications technology (ICT) solutions and services, when a
company doesn’t fully define what the cloud can do for it, it leads
to a less-than-optimized strategy that underserves the
organization. To help IT pros avoid common pitfalls, Logicalis has
identified five mistakes companies make in their cloud
strategies.
“If you ask 10 people to define ‘the cloud,’
you’ll get 30 answers,” says Steve Pelletier, cloud solution
architect at Logicalis. “Cloud is a buzzword; you hear
commercials and advertisements all saying ‘Cloud, cloud,
cloud.’ But it’s not a well-defined term and that leads to
people not fully understanding the enormous opportunities that
cloud computing can offer their businesses today. When
businesspeople – even the most experienced IT pros – have a limited
view of this nebulous term, ‘the cloud,’ it’s hard for them to make
the best decisions for their companies.”
Companies that fail to explore all the options
may be leaving valuable services untapped and potential savings
unrealized. Pelletier says there are five significant ways
businesses today are missing out on the full potential of the
cloud. And identifying and understanding these potential
pitfalls is the key to avoiding them.
Five Mistakes Companies Make in their
Cloud Strategies
1.
Looking only at the Short Term: When developing a
cloud strategy, many organizations only look at their short-term
objectives – what can the cloud do for me right now? –
instead of developing a longer term cloud strategy. This
limits their future capabilities and can lead to unintentional
design limitations that could easily have been avoided with longer
term planning.
2.
Using Colloquialisms: The “cloud” is really a
generic term that condenses a broad spectrum of services and
functionalities into a single word. Among these are
platform-as-a-service, infrastructure-as-a-service,
software-as-a-service, backup and disaster recovery as a service –
all of these functionalities and more can be a part of a
well-planned cloud strategy. By looking at the cloud as a
means to acquire a single service, people are pigeonholing
themselves into an isolated strategy that may miss out on the
myriad of additional untapped possibilities an expanded private,
public or hybrid cloud option could offer them.
3.
Viewing the Cloud Simply as an IT Evolution:
When businesses think of the cloud as an evolution in technology,
they may miss out on the bigger picture; cloud, Pelletier says, is
really more of a change in business strategy than in IT
functionality. The cloud allows businesses to consume IT
resources as a service, which has a lot more reach into process
than into actual technology and requires a deeper connection
between IT and a company’s business units as a result.
4.
Engaging in Tech Talk: The cloud is not something
that the IT department should implement in a vacuum. Getting
end users – and that means the users inside a company as well as
clients – what they want, when and where they want it in terms of
IT functionality requires a new way of thinking on everyone’s
part. Because the cloud means the company is buying the
services its needs most, this is a solution that should be defined
and designed by the entire business as a whole. IT pros need
to know what each business unit needs in terms of services before
they can build a cloud solution that will give users the what, when
and where of IT services that they demand.
5.
Trading Performance for Dollars: What to put in,
what to leave out? Businesses often make the mistake of choosing
inappropriate applications to move into public clouds. In a
public cloud, businesses are taking their internal IT assets –
oftentimes their users’ desktops which are huge consumers of IT
resources - and moving them into another provider’s service to save
money. The problem is, they are moving the end user
experience farther away from the user. It may well save the
company money, but at what price? IT pros must remember to
consider the impact on performance and user experience as well as
the bottom line in every cloud decision they make.
Logicalis’ Pelletier says the best way to
avoid these common cloud computing mistakes is to choose an
experienced cloud partner that offers an unbiased cloud strategy:
“Companies should seek a cloud partner that has the ability to
consult with you and develop a cloud strategy and roadmap. By
finding a partner that understands and can deliver on the
complexities of both public and private clouds, that gives
businesses the ability to examine every angle of a solution.
It gives a company a more realistic view of what is possible as
well as what is coming down the road so they can develop an
insightful and well-planned longer term strategy that will serve a
myriad of needs well into the future.”
- To learn more, visit
Logicalis’ dedicated cloud Web site here.
- Watch a brief video on
Logicalis’ Enterprise Cloud solutions - public, private and hybrid
-
here.
- Find out about Logicalis’
private cloud solutions through a short video
here.
- Twitter: Follow us to keep up-to-date
with @Logicalis.
About Logicalis
Logicalis is an international provider of
integrated information and communications technology (ICT)
solutions and services founded on a superior breadth of knowledge
and expertise in communications & collaboration; data center;
and professional and managed services.
Logicalis Group employs approximately 2,500
people worldwide, including highly trained service specialists who
design, specify, deploy and manage complex ICT infrastructures to
meet the needs of over 5,000 corporate and public sector
customers. To achieve this, Logicalis maintains strong
partnerships with technology leaders such as Cisco, HP, IBM and
Microsoft.
The Logicalis Group has annualized revenues of
over $1 billion, from operations in the UK, US, Germany, South
America and Asia Pacific, and is fast establishing itself as one of
the leading IT and Communications solution integrators,
specializing in the areas of advanced technologies and
services.
The Logicalis Group is a division of Datatec
Limited, listed on the Johannesburg and London AIM Stock Exchanges,
with revenues of approximately $5 billion.
For more information, visit http://www.us.logicalis.com/.