The Cloud – Simply a CapEx/OpEx Choice?

May 22, 2013 by Leave a comment

Ken Landoline

Ken Landoline

Summary Bullets:

  • The cloud approach to telecom solutions is catching on like wildfire as a growing number of vendors offer a cloud version of their products and some report that cloud solutions already account for the major portion of all sales.
  • In addition to a shift of expenditures from a large capital outlay to a monthly operational expense the reasons companies are moving to the cloud fall into a few more categories including; flexibility in changing capacity levels, speed in adding applications to premise-based solutions while protecting current investments, and disaster recovery back-up.

While much is made of the CapEx versus OpEx comparison of premise- versus cloud-based solutions, it seems those decisions are limited, for the most part, to end users that are in the start-up or “greenfield” mode of their lifecycle. Conversations I have had with many enterprise end users regarding the premise versus cloud decision process, as well as vendors selling telecom solutions, suggest many purchasing situations fits into one of three scenarios. In scenario 1 the business has a premise-based solution but appreciates the ability of the cloud to add capacity when needed and shrink capacity when activity slows down. Such a situation could be a retail contact center with a premise-based solution that must expand and shrink based on the seasonality of their business. Adding remote, home-based agents via a cloud offering is the perfect solution. Scenario 2 are end users with a substantial investment in a premise-based solution but a requirement to add applications and broader functionality quickly and efficiently without scrapping the not yet depreciated investment. The application of a “hybrid” solution allows the business to add applications to existing solutions without scrapping the premise based solution prematurely, before it is fully depreciated. In scenario 3, a few end users see cloud solutions as a method of providing a disaster recovery, back-up system to their premise-based system that will take over operations when disaster strikes. In this situation the cloud solution can be run in parallel to the premise solution and the cloud could take over if and when the premise-based solution fails for any reason, maintaining operations. Although the disaster solution may add significantly to operating costs, in many situations company revenue streams can be preserved, which make it a feasible investment. Read more of this post

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BYOA and the Enterprise Application Portal: Create Your Own Internal Company Storefront

April 17, 2013 by Leave a comment

Joel Stradling

Joel Stradling

Summary Bullets:

  • The concept of ‘consumerization of IT’ is sure to evolve naturally in your organization, as employees want to use applications of their own choosing.
  • Some policy control is essential, and a sanctioned company app store is a good idea.
  • Companies such as Intel give employees an official app store, but users can also freely consume ‘unofficial’ apps from outside this domain.

First, the Chief Information Officer had to deal with the complexities that BYOD brought up; now, there is an increasing momentum to BYOA – in other words ’bring your own application.’  Extending beyond this is the concept of an open storefront for appliances, computing power, storage, OS, databases and so on – in other words, all IT.  Service providers are on board, as evidenced by the launches of several online store initiatives: Interoute launched CloudStore, offering applications, appliances, professional services and more; Belgacom offers Becloud; KPN offers a cloud store; and Orange’s VPN Galerie offers access to many apps developed both by Orange and by independent ISVs.  It is fair to say that the concept is already mature for the SME market place, with Belgacom’s Becloud offerings tailored for the mass SME segment but with more sophistication for larger companies.  Similarly, KPN’s Open Cloud Store gives its reseller partners (ISPs, SIs and other telcos) the opportunity to sell, provision and support cloud services to the diverse Dutch SME market. Read more of this post

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Cloud-based MEAP is a Viable Alternative to Homegrown/Pure Play Software

April 15, 2013 by Leave a comment

Charlotte Dunlap

Charlotte Dunlap

Summary Bullets

  • Cloud-based services wiggle into the MEAP market segment
  • Salesforce.com will leverage and extend its successful cloud platform for mobile app development

The mobile app platform market just got a little more crowded and a little more interesting with a couple heavy hitters entering the space from a cloud services perspective. Salesforce.com and HP have just announced separate mobile cloud services, aimed at eliminating the cumbersome software development process involved with traditional software products. Read more of this post

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Healthcare Inches Into the Cloud

March 5, 2013 by Leave a comment

Amy Larsen DeCarlo

Amy Larsen DeCarlo

Summary Bullets:

  • Recent research on cloud use conducted by IT provider CDW found that just 35% of the healthcare IT professionals surveyed are either implementing or supporting cloud deployments today.
  • Worries about security are keeping some health organizations on the sidelines; however, organizations in the industry are becoming increasingly receptive to the model, based at least in part on experience with on-demand storage and other services for personal use.

As adroit as the healthcare sector is when it comes to applying advanced medical technologies to improve diagnostics, treatments, and ultimately patient outcomes, the industry has a more awkward relationship with information technology in general and collaboration solutions in particular.  Though healthcare providers have often invested heavily in communications systems to streamline the information sharing process, many of these often proprietary implementations have fallen far short of expectations.  We can chalk some of the lackluster results to privacy and compliance issues that mandate organizations maintain tight control over information; however, there are also process and even cultural obstructions that are getting in the way of progress. Read more of this post

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Undervaluing Disaster Recovery in Data Center Services

February 19, 2013 by Leave a comment

Michal Halama

Michal Halama

Summary Bullets

  • Treating business continuity and disaster recovery services as ‘must-haves’ can obscure value and cost
  • Cloud-based business continuity and disaster recovery services can adjust to variable values over time

The best businesses (buyers and service providers) develop effective business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR) strategies well in advance of natural and man-made catastrophes. AT&T’s investment and development of physical solutions to help customers recover from major outages is a good example. Some other organizations become focused later, and may survive (through good fortune). This can result in BCDR services later being assumed and treated as ‘must-haves’. They may then be bundled with underlying services, which can obscure the true value and cost of BCDR to service provider and customer alike. BCDR teams: does your organization value your service highly enough, or do colleagues see ‘must-have’ BCDR as a cost weighing on underlying service? Read more of this post

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Disruption (and Progress) in the Cloud, Continued

February 5, 2013 by Leave a comment

  • Amy Larsen DeCarlo

    Amy Larsen DeCarlo

    One of the bigger benefits promised by the cloud is cost-effective access to the latest and greatest technology, often including compute-intensive services that were out of reach for all but the largest enterprises.

  • Providers are now delivering some advanced services through the cloud including analytics and ERP applications.  The migration to the cloud, and away from a conventional consumption model, is having a profound impact on the hardware suppliers and the competitive playing field.  How will this shake up effect service delivery and customer choice?

In the traditional client/server computing model that dominated the market for so many years, organizations relied on a Cap-Ex-centered approach to IT consumption where their individual technology pursuits were tied directly to often tight hardware budgets and procurement cycles.  New application upgrades were linked to long term licensing agreements and sometimes lengthy hardware depreciation time tables. This could push some often ambitious processing-intensive projects well into the future or even outside the realm of possibility. Read more of this post

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Yuletide Blog: 2012 in Review and Can We Expect More of the Same in 2013?

December 28, 2012 by Leave a comment

Joel Stradling

Joel Stradling

Summary Bullets:

  • Making the Internet and private data networks faster is still going to be a top priority in 2013
  • Security remains of paramount importance for any data service
  • Data centre and computing infrastructure become more tightly integrated and embedded with network infrastructure in 2013

Looking back at what happened in 2012, the highlights of the year within the enterprise network and IT service industry include consolidation such as the acquisition of Cable&Wireless Worldwide by Vodafone, the march towards fatter pipes with 100G launches, and progress on the part of carriers to become cloud-based IT providers and cloud service aggregators. Network security remains very high on the agenda, with two providers reporting daily attacks and hacking at major events, namely BT during the Olympics and Interoute supporting UEFA in the Euro 2012 event. However the most impactful initiatives are in the building of new generations of cloud-ready data centres as an intrinsic part of the network to fuel the desire of service providers to claim a stake in the cloud IT service market. Read more of this post

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Edging Toward the Cloud Future

December 17, 2012 by Leave a comment

Amy Larsen DeCarlo

Amy Larsen DeCarlo

Summary Bullets:

  • While the majority of public and private sector organizations are employing cloud services to support at least a percentage of their IT needs, more conventional approaches to technology still dominate.
  • Although questions about service stability, security, and compliance remain, maturing delivery models and some promising partnerships could signify the start of a more productive phase in cloud computing.

It is the season to take stock of the year gone by and look forward to the one ahead, trying to anticipate what is on the horizon.  With respect to the cloud, we have seen both forward momentum and some unfortunate backsliding.  Arguments and challenges remain around all of the issues that have been the steepest obstacles to entry: stability, security, compliance, complexity, and to some extent, cost.  Outages, breaches, the lack of common standards for effective security, and hesitation over the difficulty and expense of migrating legacy application workloads into an on-demand environment are keeping some organizations on the sidelines – at least for now.  Read more of this post

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Brokering a Better Cloud Position for the Enterprise

December 5, 2012 by 1 Comment

Amy Larsen DeCarlo

Amy Larsen DeCarlo

Summary Bullets:

  • With the emphasis on cost competitiveness and transparency, distinguishing features can quickly fall away in the cloud.
  • Some providers respond by stepping up to strategic roles as chief advocates for their clients, aggregating services and supplying mechanisms to streamline provisioning and management.

In an environment where providers trumpet similar pricing models and comparable feature sets based on technology from common vendors, it can be hard to distinguish one cloud service from another. Enterprise IT decision-makers tend to select providers that have earned their trust through work in other projects. However, there is still room for rival providers to compete for new accounts by offering a compelling solution. The most savvy of these service providers recognize that a change as inherently complex a change as the move to the cloud presents opportunities for them to position themselves as  strategic partners in guiding clients through this transition. Read more of this post

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Migrating to Cloud Services: A Wholesale Switchover or a Step-by-Step Approach?

November 28, 2012 by 1 Comment

Summary Bullets:

  • SOHO and SMB users have the opportunity to migrate to cloud services in a single move.

  • Joel Stradling

    Larger enterprises and MNCs tend to adopt more slowly, virtualizing one IT system at a time.

How to make the switch from owning premises-based infrastructure to having all IT hosted in a cloud environment is a tricky question for IT managers to consider.  There are so many ‘cloud’ flavours out there, such as public and private clouds, hybrid VPNs and hybrid cloud solutions.  Whether it happened by intent or by some coincidence, the multi-service converged access rollout by carriers investing in NGN has paved the way for smaller companies to place all of their ICT needs, should they so desire, into the cloud in one quick-fix move.  The capability of running voice, data and video over an Ethernet or IP interface at the customer premises has been around for a while, but telcos have realized that, once the multiservice access is in place, the customer can then be presented with a wide range of cloud add-ons, including all the ‘as-a-service’ possibilities: software, communications, storage, security, cloud computing and so on.  A SOHO or SME has fewer applications to run in most cases; thus, the market is seeing more prospects within this segment entirely embracing cloud services, and at reasonable price points, where infrastructure can be shared and non-critical traffic can run on the public Internet. Read more of this post

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