An increasing number of organizations are taking advantage of private cloud solutions to drive a paradigm shift in their
Look before you leap:
What to Consider Before Deploying Private Cloud
An increasing number of organizations are taking advantage of private cloud solutions to drive a paradigm shift in their IT strategies. Using private cloud and OpenStack can completely change the way in which business workloads are handled. When correctly deployed, an OpenStack-based private cloud can provide increased agility, innovation, reduced costs and improved flexibility. Yet, in order to ensure a successful private cloud deployment, businesses must carefully consider the following five points prior to implementation:
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Clarify Business Requirements Before implementing a private cloud, organizations must clearly define their business requirements. Once these have been established, IT will be able to paint a clear picture of exactly what the company needs from the cloud deployment. Deciding on a range of factors—from technical requirements, project constraints, service-level agreements—to profiling who the cloud users will be and what they will need will ensure that the private cloud project’s success can be clearly scoped, defined and measured.
These decisions need to be made at the very start swiftly followed by a process to obtain stakeholder buy-in. Involving stakeholders in the process from the beginning ensures that once a private cloud has been deployed, IT can rely on organizational support. This a critical upfront activity to reap the full rewards of private cloud at a later stage.
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Choose the Right Workloads Not all use cases are an ideal fit for the cloud: some applications and services may be more suited to a traditional data center environment. For instance, dynamic workloads which scale-out and require agility are typically easier to implement in a private cloud than a monolithic, scale-up legacy application. More important, they may also deliver more value. Before deploying a private cloud, IT needs to explain the capabilities of the cloud to users and discuss which services and workloads would provide the most value in terms of time, cost and return on investment when deployed in the cloud. Recent SUSE research* found that 96 percent of large companies would use a cloud solution for business-critical workloads, with a private cloud being the preferred solution. This means that while OpenStack is the ideal environment for developing and deploying new web-based applications, many customers are also considering what other core business
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workloads could be a good fit for their private cloud. Using our 20 years’ experience of building hardened open source solutions and including built-in high availability features, SUSE OpenStack Cloud is the ideal foundation for these business-critical workloads. When deciding which workloads to shift to private cloud, businesses should also consider the benefits of a “bring your own hypervisor” (BYOH) approach. Many OpenStack distributions support only one hypervisor option, meaning that they are only suitable for new workload development. Uniquely, SUSE OpenStack Cloud supports the widest range of hypervisors available, including KVM, Xen, Microsoft Hyper-V and VMWare vSphere, with IBM z/VM to be added shortly. This means a wider choice of virtualized workloads can be moved to a private cloud, making cloud migration smoother and ensuring that the right workloads can be transferred to deliver greater value.
Align Business Processes
77
private cloud*
processes today are not designed to be this fast and flexible and may end up inhibiting progress instead. As an example, automated private cloud technology can provision a virtual machine in several minutes, but the approval process can last for several days or weeks.
This technology speeds up the delivery of IT services, greatly increasing business agility. Unfortunately, many business
For an organization to maximize the value of their investment in a private cloud, the business must fully embrace the cloud and
% of companies see
agility and innovation as key drivers for change when implementing a
any resulting changes to established, suitable business processes. Carefully considering current processes and identifying those which impede agility is a
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Define the Price of Self-service Cloud computing is often about enabling end-user self-service. End users can receive on-demand access to resources through an automated portal and services catalogue. As a result, even users with little experience can easily carve out their own infrastructure. While the IT department has traditionally been responsible for provisioning, maintaining and then de-provisioning service requests, the cloud’s position as a complete self-service environment shifts these responsibilities, freeing up important IT resource. Recent SUSE research* found that more than two thirds of organizations have adopted private cloud solutions for financial
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key initial step. Once this has occurred, a business can gain real value from deploying private a cloud and maximizing the value of their investment.
reasons. To ensure a smooth private cloud roll-out and guarantee a reduction in costs, businesses must take a firm decision on how to implement and manage self-service and billing capabilities. IT costs may previously have been allocated by business unit, but the metering capabilities of a private cloud mean that usage can be directly assigned and charged to the end-user’s department. Ensuring a billing strategy is in place from the start allows IT to control costs and demonstrate business value. While these self-service and billing processes may require a cultural shift in the organization, they are vital considerations when planning a successful private cloud deployment.
Prepare for Widespread Use
93
%of large organizations*
see Infrastructure-as-a-Service as the future of the data center
It’s no surprise that private cloud adoption is growing quickly, and this trend will
undoubtedly lead to further use cases. In a short time, IT departments will see their cloud solution being utilized for far more purposes than were initially requested. While this will demonstrate great user buy-in, it’s vital that IT ensures that initial success is delivered before expanding the use of private cloud within the business.
Rushing into an expansion of cloud use cases can be risky. However, once the workloads initially deployed in the cloud are successfully set up, running smoothly and delivering results, IT can consider where to expand cloud usage. While this expansion is inevitable, the cloud should only be opened up to further workloads once the value of IT’s investment in the cloud has been proven. Private clouds are the future for many enterprise workloads. Careful preparation and consideration prior to implementation
is critical for businesses wishing to maximize the value of their cloud investment. Private cloud and OpenStack offer the opportunity to change the way business is done. By considering the points above, IT can correctly position themselves for a smooth and successful private cloud deployment strategy, changing the way employees interact with IT, as well as creating new, more effective business processes to drive business innovation.
* Source: Dynamic Markets, “Private Cloud Research 2015”
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