Before the cloud, business applications were designed for a client-server environment that was relatively predictable in terms of performance requirements.
The performance and scalability requirements of cloud applications is a much different matter, however. These next-generation applications often require significantly more data on the back end than their client-server counterparts and need to scale out much faster. We’ve all heard, for example, the stories of cloud applications that have come to a screeching halt as users have unexpectedly doubled or tripled.
IT departments recognize that they need to transform their data centers to accommodate the next-generation requirements of cloud-enabled business applications. Unfortunately, the realities of limited IT budgets and resources mean that many data centers aren’t transforming fast enough to meet business demands. As a result, business decision makers are circumventing IT and going directly to third-party cloud providers to manage and deliver their business applications, from office productivity tools to big data analytics.
If the sentiment of CIOs were to be summed up in a single song, it might be the Jackson Five’s “I Want You Back.” CIOs want business applications back in their data center, and not just for security reasons. They need to leverage information to drive business innovation—something that is hard to do when the information isn’t controlled by the business. How can CIOs woo back business users? With their own private cloud.
Building a private cloud starts with a scalable, flexible, and powerful infrastructure that can deliver exceptional application performance. Converged infrastructure systems provide the perfect building blocks for private clouds: they’re quick to deploy, simple to expand, easier to manage than traditional hardware systems, and deliver high uptime because of fewer integration issues and faster problem resolution.
Building the right-sized cloud is important; while converged appliances are typically cheaper than standalone systems, the real savings occurs as virtualization drives up resource utilization, allowing IT departments to do more with less. Our Cloud Advizer service focuses on issues like right-sizing your cloud environment, and we recommend it for most enterprises that are building private or hybrid cloud environments for the first time. The choice of converged infrastructure is also an important one. Leveraging your existing IT skill sets is a key consideration, and many of our customers choose VCE vBlocks because they’ve already deployed VMware, Cisco, and EMC solutions in their data centers.
Once their private cloud is in place, CIOs have a platform that supports rapid application development and deployment on a par with the public cloud. In addition to bringing external applications back in house, many businesses are also looking to migrate legacy applications to the cloud to improve performance and support the trend toward more (and more mobile) users. Bringing legacy applications into the cloud can also reduce licensing costs in some cases.
Although converged systems are simpler to manage, they also lend themselves to managed services for this reason. A managed services partner like Rolta AdvizeX can monitor application performance, security, and upgrades from a single interface with a converged infrastructure, providing more value at a lower cost than managing hundreds of different hardware elements and firmware/software updates from multiple vendors.
To find out how you can improve application performance and win back business users, talk to Rolta AdvizeX about our private cloud solutions featuring VCE technology. ▪