So your IT environment is virtualised. What’s the next step?
Cloud computing is floating to the top of a lot of priority lists.
In the latest Gartner surveys, it’s considered a key initiative for
40% of IT leaders.
It’s become popular for a lot of reasons. With cloud solutions,
organisations are experiencing lower infrastructure and maintenance
costs, elasticity to respond to changing business needs,
acceleration of new application platforms, increased business
responsiveness, and speed to market, simplified IT management, and
a shift in capital expenditures to a variable operation expense,
which produces better cash flow and lowers financial risk.
When we hear “cloud computing,” most of us think about the
public cloud in which multiple companies purchase, compute, and
store space on an as-needed basis from a virtual computing vendor.
However, private clouds, which are created specifically for one’s
organisation and aligned with their business needs, are quickly
becoming the preferred approach.
Like public clouds, private clouds offer scalability, rapid
provisioning, charge-back by usage, and can even be hosted
off-site. The difference is that rather than purchasing space in
someone else’s data centre, private clouds are built within your
own data centre, leveraging the equipment you already have and
making the most of your existing skills, assets, and virtualisation
investments.
A private cloud is the logical evolution of server
virtualisation in which virtualisation is extended to your storage
and networks, which are then managed with tools that treat these
servers, storage, and networks as a single pool of resources.
Automation and orchestration tools are the key to moving from a
virtualised infrastructure to a true private cloud. The
infrastructure transformation is what enables an organisation to
build a cloud computing delivery model.
Cloud computing is actually a delivery model for IT as a
service, focused on aligning the deployment of IT technology and
software solutions to meet your business needs. With that in mind,
the key components of a private cloud are strategy and operation,
abstraction of infrastructure, resource pooling, services catalog,
security and compliance, consumption model, auto/self-provisioning,
elasticity/agility, monitoring/capacity planning, and charge
back/show back.
So now we’re developing a picture of a private cloud, but where
would you start when it comes to implementing one? Unfortunately,
it’s not as easy as buying a product. It’s a holistic approach,
involving an assessment of your business needs and optimisation of
your IT to meet those needs.
To help you in this process, turn to Logicalis. Logicalis builds
private clouds that are custom-made to fit your specific needs by
leveraging your investment in virtualisation technologies. Thanks
to our tested and proven processes and 20 years of experience in
computing storage and networking with enterprise-class
organisations around the world, building private clouds is in our
DNA.
We are one of the few partners with the ability to create truly
integrated private cloud solutions. As an accredited expert data
centre partner, you can look to us for private clouds based on all
major server and storage platforms.
And of course, we have virtualisation experts on all major
hypervisors and operating systems, ready to assist you with cloud
infrastructures, from x86 to midrange computing systems. If you are
looking to make an internal IT infrastructure as efficiently to own
and operate as possible, mitigate the cost of replacing an
end-of-life data centre, move IT infrastructure provisioning to a
trusted service partner, or meet requirements for the
externally-provided disaster recovery services required to host
core business applications, such as ERP or e-commerce sites, then
you should consider cloud computing as an option for your
organisation.
Logicalis offers several cloud-focused assessment services,
including detailed cost analysis. To find out more about our
Consult, Build, Manage, and Operate cloud solutions, visit
http://www.logicalis.com/solutions-and-services/cloud-solutions-and-services.aspx
and let’s get started today.