Ric Telford, from IBM presented:
A private cloud is not ‘the cloud’. This is not true. Cloud model can be embraced by everybody.
Cloud is a delivery model for IT with these attributes:
- On demand self service
- Ubiquitous network access
- Location independent resource pooling
- Rapid elasticity
A delivery model that allows developers to get to consumers
A delivery model that everyone can do.
“Cloud is about not having to own servers. No capital expense” this is true.
Can get a lot of the value independent of if you own the servers or not.
Private cloud = IT capabilities are provided as a service over an intranet, within the enterprise and behind the firewall
Public cloud = it activities/functions are provided as a service over the internet
Hybrid = Internal and external service delivery methods are integrated
Figured cloud will evolve to Platform as a Service (PaaS). Deploy app to platform and the system takes care of capacity/redundancy/etc.
When going to cloud, encouraged to do a Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) analysis based on a financial institution:
- Divide Could implementation life cycle into 3 phases
- Analyze major cost components
- Identify tasks, skills, and considerations from each phase
- Apply best practices, fill solution gaps, and enable skills.
Realize it’s more than just server costs, look at energy costs (cooling/etc), real estate costs, etc.
Here is where private clouds are going:
Yesterday: Individual Deployment
Today: Shared hardware and Virtualized apps.
Tomorrow: Integrated Middleware platform and Image Management
Benefits of today:
- Increased utilization of infrastructure
- Location independent deployment
Challenges of today:
- Building images
- Image proliferation
- Governance of changes
- Creations of composite apps
- Connectivity to legacy and off premises apps
Benefits of Tomorrow:
- Standardized middleware
- Increased utilization of software
- Improved deployment speed
- Simplified app management
IBM Smart Cloud is IBM’s cloud offering. Focused on enterprise customers mostly.
Hybrid cloud: Share data and process integration across boundaries (public and private cloud services).
IBM Product = Cast Iron to enable data/process integration across boundaries
Where are we going with cloud:
- To fulfill its potential as the next evolution of enterprise IT, cloud comp promises to become much more than an enabler of it efficiencies.
- It promises to become a driver of business transformation, innovation and growth.
- IT without boundaries.
Mobile and cloud… one begets the other. Cloud will enable companies to be more responsive in the mobile space.
IBM sees Analytics as the ‘next big thing’ in the cloud.
55% believe cloud enables them to focus on transforming their business and make their processes leaner, faster and more agile. Innovation=yes
Biggest bottleneck of cloud = network costs. They haven’t come down like other costs.
Figure 20% (like highly regulated) of biz processes should not be migrated to cloud.
Overall, I went to three Cloud based sessions today, one by IBM (this one), one by Amazon Web Services, and one by RackSpace. I would have to say that many of the same concepts/conclusions/points were communicated in general by each company. IBM focused on enterprise push, Amazon on being the place for everyone, and RackSpace on their use of OpenStack.