Why Cloud? Cloud vs Traditional IT
Thursday, March 29, 2012 at 12:24 AM | Share Article There is often an attempt to explain what cloud is all about or why it so important to the IT industry. The reason is very simple; cloud is a fundamental shift in how IT is done as a whole. Forget the cheesy Microsoft ‘To the Cloud’ commercials or the hype around Apple’s iCloud. Those advertisements are for traditional home users that don’t have to worry about hardware leases for servers, networking and storage. Home users don’t usually have to worry about the cost of 440 CPU licenses for their virtual infrastructure or need to take a bottle of Advil to understand Microsoft licensing. IT administrators shouldn’t have to worry about patching their infrastructure or spending huge capital on getting their own infrastructure complaint to security standards when they can use an existing infrastructure that already has included in the original design for the entire cloud infrastructure.
The days of traditional hardware, software and IT as we know it are coming to an end. The following will break down the simplest components of Traditional IT and compare it to Cloud or OnDemand Infrastructure; specifically related to Infrastructure as a Service.
Business Operations
Traditional IT Infrastructure: Limitations between IT and Business interoperability. Small businesses are especially susceptible to long periods of downtime because there is a lack of capital and skillset to provision and maintain secondary systems to test upgrades ensure smooth transitions and fail safe infrastructure in place for expected hardware failures and disasters.
OnDemand (Cloud) Infrastructure: Businesses only pay for what they use. Employees can access and edit company-specific data including email, financials, and other documents on or off-site seamlessly in real-time. No special device or virtual portal required; only a smart phone or laptop is needed. Decreases overhead costs since employees can work remotely. An organization can hire talent from all over the world and not just what is available locally.
IT Operations
Traditional IT Infrastructure: IT Support and maintenance is focused on more frequently than technological innovation. In-house and contracted labor is needed to install and maintain hardware and infrastructure. Training required for a lot of the complex systems required for a resilient infrastructure is costly and repetitive.
OnDemand (Cloud) Infrastructure: IT department no longer has to worry about constant server updates and other computing issues; they will be free to concentrate on innovation. Requires fewer IT staff so that there is more money to spend towards moving the business forward. IT personnel no longer need to worry about keeping hardware, software and data backups up-to-date. Bookkeeping stays consistent since fees are subscription-based, or are incremental with the pay-as-you-go model, which is easy to budget for the year.
Hardware
Traditional IT Infrastructure: Cycling of hardware licensing is mandatory based on agreements with hardware vendors ranging from 1-5 years. Major Capital Expenditure is required to expand, upgrade and maintain the existing infrastructure.
OnDemand (Cloud) Infrastructure: Companies bypass the need to upgrade hardware and software every one to three years. The underlying infrastructure is refreshed and upgraded as required and is completely transparent to its tenants and services within the OnDemand Infrastructure.
Software
Traditional IT Infrastructure: A lot of software licensing is not structured to be consumed by the business on a pay per use model and as also tied to mandatory agreements and renewal policies that also cycle between 1- 5 years. A large amount of capital expenditure is required to acquire, upgrade and maintain the existing licensing agreements.
OnDemand (Cloud) Infrastructure: Software Licensing agreements can be brokered through OnDemand Licensing in a pay as you go model which will provide the ability to expand and reduce the number of licensed for certain applications as required by the business.
Datacenter Power and Cooling
Traditional IT Infrastructure: A lot of today's existing datacenter infrastructure for small/medium business is housed internally at local office locations. When the decision is made to move to a secured datacenter, many are surprised about the additional cost and limitations policies with datacenters. Most in-house IT departments with in-house hardware and datacenters don't realize that the building covers the cost of power and cooling.
OnDemand (Cloud) Infrastructure: OnDemand offerings are housed in Tier 3 high availability an secure datacenters. Levering datacenter partnerships, the datacenter cooling, power costs and risks managed and maintenance by the OnDemand Infrastructure.
Network Connectivity
Traditional IT Infrastructure: Very rarely can small/medium business can justify the cost of a large datacenter network backbone to support services that require it.
OnDemand (Cloud) Infrastructure: Datacenter network is directly connected to major Internet backbones and regional ISPs available in the vicinity of a given data center location. It provides customers with a redundant Internet connection, a 100 per cent availability SLA and the flexibility to scale to higher bandwidth requirements. The service also includes access to a central NTP service from a stratum-1 time source, and self-administration of customer domains using the datacenters robust DNS management service. The location takes advantage of a strong network topology, multiple power grids, and close proximity to fully redundant feeds from Tier 1 providers.
Installation Services
Traditional IT Infrastructure: Provided that existing capacity is on premise and ready to be used; the ability to install new services within the infrastructure. The challenge comes when the new services require additional resources and capacity that the current in-house infrastructure is unable to provide thus kicking of another procurement cycle that can prove to be costly and time constrained. Unexpected requirements for new projects and business events can create challenges with cost and wasted time for procurement when the infrastructure needs to be expanded.
OnDemand (Cloud) Infrastructure: The customers environment is already up and running, ready for your capacity to be turned on.
Ability to turn down unused capacity
Traditional IT Infrastructure: Traditional hardware purchases and deployments don't allow for the flexibility to support a pay as go model of hardware acquisition and usage.
OnDemand (Cloud) Infrastructure: Pay as you use, if projects come to a close turn down capacity and stop paying.
Rapid provisioning
Traditional IT Infrastructure: Ability to provision new servers and storage can be simple to a point. When procurement of new hardware is required, the time to plan, provision, test and deploy is dramatically increased and can slow down business and IT processes.
OnDemand (Cloud) Infrastructure: Ability to provision more servers and storage within minutes.
High Availability environment
Traditional IT Infrastructure: Small businesses are especially susceptible to long periods of downtime because there is a lack of capital and skillset to provision and maintain secondary systems to test upgrades ensure smooth transitions and fail safe infrastructure in place for expected hardware failures and disasters.
OnDemand (Cloud) Infrastructure: Entire environment is built for guaranteed 99.99% availability to design similar solutions are millions of dollars in investment.
24 x 7 Platform support
Traditional IT Infrastructure: The cost of covering 24x7 support using the same staff to maintain, support and develop the infrastructure can be challenging to sustain without disrupting work/life balance for staff. Access to in-house high level expertise can be difficult to attain. Lack of overlap of skillsets and cross training with limited staff can also be challenging.
OnDemand (Cloud) Infrastructure: A 24x7 team in place to ensure that environment is up and functional at all times. Access to in-house high level expertise across multiple technologies is easily attainable and the customer only pays for what they need to be supported.
Full Management of OS and Apps
Traditional IT Infrastructure: Dependent on the skills of the IT staff and consultants engaged to support and upgrade the infrastructure which is challenging with a limited amount of expertise in-house.
OnDemand (Cloud) Infrastructure: Several Managed service options exist that allow for self service, co-managed, or fully managed environments.
IT Governance Framework
Traditional IT Infrastructure: The cost of deploying an infrastructure to comply with a high level of security standards can be extremely high depending on the skillset and hardware investment of the current architecture. Achieving ISAE 16 / SAS 70 Type II compliance can be very costly to an organization if the existing infrastructure does or cannot support it.
OnDemand (Cloud) Infrastructure: Built to ISAE 16 / SAS 70 Type II report and PCI DSS certification. Ensure clear understanding of the security practiced at the different cloud service providers and what their SLA’s state. Find ability to audit physical site and resources.