In Parts I & II, the Crescent Solutions team read examined the IBM White Paper “Getting Cloud Computing Right” and “Adopting a Private Cloud Strategy.”
In this post, we will finish with a summary from the SearchCloudComputing.com E-Guide “Tips for adopting a private cloud strategy to overcome IT challenges and realize benefits.”
A recent survey of Gartner clients found that 75% of companies expect to pursue private cloud by 2012.
Every organization considering the private cloud is destined to travel on a maturity journey that industry experts agree consists of a number of stages, from laying the IT infrastructure groundwork to assessing early scenarios for private cloud deployments.
IT Virtualization Maturity
All agree the initial step, IT virtualization maturity, is the essence of evolving to the private cloud. Forrester’s Staten outlines four stages of virtualization maturity – acclimation, strategic consolidation, optimization and automation – to assess where your organization is in the process.
Acclimation: The first stage, acclimation, is the time it takes for an organization to learn about virtualization, how it works, test it against simple applications, and then determine where it can safely be applied.
Strategic Consolidation: A company is in stage two, strategic consolidation, when its comfort level with virtualization shifts from concept to strategic implementation, having recognized the value proposition of virtualization as an agent of cost savings and change.
“At this point the case has to be made for why a workload should not be virtualized,” said Staten.
Optimization: Stage three, optimization, occurs when virtualization empowers process improvement and organizations get serious about life-cycle management of virtual machines and cleaning up virtual server sprawl. It’s at this stage where there must be an experiential shift in thinking about the IT infrastructure.
“Thinking in the physical world will hurt you in the virtual world,” said Staten.
Automation: Companies at stage four of virtualization maturity sit at the precipice of being cloud-ready. These organizations grasp the importance of policy-based automation of the virtualization pool, which, explains Staten, pushes the organization to share services and treat the virtualization pool as an internal cloud service.
Set the stage for your cloud
Inherent in the four steps to virtualization maturity are key elements that set the stage for private cloud computing. These include a willingness to change the organization and internal processes and gain the political clout to overcome resistance.
Companies who are grounded in stage three are ready to create a “greenfield” project (lacking any constraints imposed by prior work) for private cloud. Experts recommend test and development workloads as a safe place for organizations get their feet wet with private cloud.
“It’s a good proving ground and learning ground,” said Fausto Bernadini, director of IT cloud portfolio services at IBM.
Additionally, a greenfield project of non-critical workloads at stage three can help accelerate an organization to stage four.
Cloud IT Costs & ROI
Companies venturing into the private cloud can expect to make big investments in people and processes, as well as new automation and policy enforcement tools.
Unlike the public cloud, where companies can grow and shrink usage (and ultimately costs) based on need, internal private cloud costs are perpetual.
Private cloud return on investment (ROI) evolves alongside this virtualization maturity path. Ultimately, ROI comes from high utilization of the resources that are dedicated to the private cloud.
“The higher the sustained utility of the private cloud, the better the payback,” said Staten.
There is also a reduction in operational costs, as well. IT spends so much time supporting and managing what they have in place – managing routine, mundane tasks. This approach can automate those tasks and eliminate them, allowing IT to apply more attention to applications and ultimately deliver a much better service to the business.
Part I – IBM White Paper: Getting Cloud Computing Right
Part II – Adopting a ‘Private Cloud’ Strategy