Public and Private Cloud – Have you found an equilibrium?

By Graham Robinson, National Cisco Practice Manager, Data^#3

Wow! Conversations with my customers around their cloud strategy have certainly changed over the past year. Not too long ago there was very little discussion around “if” they would be moving workloads to a [public] cloud provider, because for them, it was simply a matter of “when”.

…But they could never decide on a cloud provider.

Consequently the workloads we were discussing are exactly where they were 12 months ago, and they’re still sweating legacy data center assets while comparing the plethora of cloud based options in front of them.

And that’s really no surprise.

With the number of Google search results for “Cloud Providers in Australia” nearing 9 million, cloud has plunged sharply into the depths of Gartner’s trough of disillusionment as early adopters report significant cost blow-outs, and industry leaders are forced to apologise to customers for global service disruptions¹.

Those same customers that once told me that they were under significant pressure from their boards to reduce costs by moving services to the cloud are currently breathing a little easier, having been given a little latitude to re-think cloud and how best to adopt such a transformational technology. And the once myopic conversations focused on cheaper “as-a-service” options have given way to mature application-centric discussions with focus on the people, process and infrastructure changes to get the most value out of cloud technology – but that doesn’t necessarily make the cloud decision less confusing.

To make it easier, we spend time working closely with our customers to profile their people, processes and applications in order to determine the right SLAs and how best to integrated cloud into the business. For a fantastic overview of our process check out the Data^#3 Cloud Journey Video.

By using our own Cloud Services to support our customer’s multi-cloud environments we’ve successfully absorbed their pain; managing workloads across Public, Private, Shared and Hybrid-Cloud environments. Until recently however, something was still missing – the desire to migrate workloads between cloud was met with a little trepidation.

Hypervisor choice? Security requirements? Traffic prioritsation? SLA alignments? The variances between cloud service offerings meant untold hours of manual migration processes to shift workloads between clouds – until now. Cisco has stepped in with something a little different; a Cloud Network Hypervisor.

Cisco’s InterCloud Fabric securely extends your existing Data Centre to both Cisco-Powered and Public Cloud providers as needed, and on-demand.

By dynamically translating between the unique attributes of varying cloud services, InterCloud Fabric enforces the security, traffic and reliability requirements for a workload, ensuring those requirements are honored by the cloud of your choice, migrating the application workload with minimal effort. Your mission critical workloads may end up on Data^#3’s Enterprise-Grade Cloud. Your standard business applications may sit happily in Microsoft Azure. And your Dev/Test? Well, AWS might be a great choice. 3 types of workloads, 3 different clouds, 1 single Hybrid-Cloud management platform.

And if the cloud doesn’t meet the requirements? Simple. The workload won’t migrate to it.

The Data^#3 Cloud Readiness Assessment is the best way to understand the specific benefits and risks of transitioning to cloud for your organisation. We will ensure to understand your unique situation, environment and aspirations and offer advice on best fit cloud providers and transition strategy. When you consider that by 2017, it’s predicted that nearly two thirds of all workloads will be processed in the cloud², it’s critical you choose a partner that can provide the right advice and support you on your journey to the cloud.

¹ JR Raphael. (2015, July 1). The worst cloud outages of 2013 (so far). InfoWorld. Retrieved from: http://www.infoworld.com/article/2606768/cloud-computing/107783-The-worst-cloud-outages-of-2013-so-far.html

² Cisco. (2012). Cisco Global Cloud Index: Forecast and Methodology, 2012-2017. Accessed May 2014, from http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/solutions/collateral/service-provider/global-cloud-index-gci/Cloud_Index_White_Paper.html