All-In On Cloud? You Bet. Absolutely. No Problem.
If your IT list now includes, “Make a plan to move everything to the cloud by next year,” then you realize how serious your business is about change. Public clouds are delivering on their promise of operational simplicity, rapid spin-up of new applications, and capital-investment-free computing. You know that, you want it, and you’re committed to doing it as soon as someone gets you a big pile of money. Good luck with that!
The truth is that the majority of current data center applications aren’t suitable for the public cloud. Read through Amazon’s service-level agreement (SLA), and you’ll find out that server instances can vanish without warning. If your application relies on a database server, or you need to keep Active Directory running, or if you have one of those amazing Excel-as-programming-language servers, then don’t expect to run those successfully long term at Amazon without surprising failures and banging your head against obscure errors.
The best candidates for cloud-based applications are new designs where none of the components are a single point of failure. I’m sure you’ve heard, “We need to treat servers like cattle, not pets,” and that’s an excellent metaphor for a cloud application design group.
But many applications, even newly written ones, are poor candidates for a public cloud. Maybe you need more local reliability than your internet provides for processing transactions or providing continuous access to critical health care data. Or the amount of data you’re processing dwarfs the amount you need to send others — process manufacturing or geological exploration. And some organizations have strong concerns or regulatory requirements for data privacy.
But that list — if you can’t make real progress toward those business demands — it’s going to get ugly.
I Like Big Blocks (of Time) and I Can’t Deny
You’ve got great people, but where are you going to get the time for them to act? I’ve met so many Zenoss customers, and I’m uniformly impressed by the dedication, inventiveness, and flexibility that IT teams show. They are absolutely ready, eager, to attack the cloud move, if you could only get them time away from all tasks it takes to keep things running.
That’s what you dream of: big blocks of time.
Time to help the application teams set up Azure or Windows accounts for their new applications and test servers, steal whatever great tools they wrote to keep their bills low, and harden them into new IT services.
Time to identify the top current cloud candidate applications and get them moved.
Time to pick out software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications to replace generic needs like email and calendaring.
What can you do before they come for you?
Hey, Have I Got a Deal for You!
Here’s a two-part prescription to carve out some time blocks.
First, if you’re not already running Software-Defined IT OperationsTM with Zenoss, you’re missing out on some easily attainable big blocks of time. Our customers tell us that they’re eliminating half of their downtime (and all those meetings you have to deal with it!) and are freeing up 15 percent of the operations budget (this year!) to use on new initiatives. While you’re at it, let Zenoss operate it for you, too. Zenoss as a Service (ZaaS), the Zenoss SaaS option, is turning into our most common deployment option, and the reviews are stellar.
Second, put all those never-public-cloud applications onto NetApp’s new Managed EdgeCloud through your favorite service provider.
NetApp Managed EdgeCloud is a reliable, managed source of IT power that extends into any facility where you need it — data center, sure, but also branch offices, retail facilities, plants, even your customers’ facilities. NetApp designed it using familiar components — NetApp storage, Cisco compute and networking, and Microsoft software — but you won’t be managing any of that. The service provider is completely responsible.
It’s what you wanted to get from virtualization, i.e., less work, but didn’t. All you have to do is spin up virtual machines (VMs), and let someone else run them. Just like a public cloud? No, those non-cloud-ready applications are perfect candidates for this environment. Nothing is going to disappear suddenly — the data is right in your facility, and there’s no WAN latency.
By the way, NetApp’s recommended monitoring solution for Managed EdgeCloud service providers is Zenoss Service Dynamics — and for the same reasons you love it: Software-Defined IT Operations so changes are fast and automatic, the ability to predict and shrink downtime, and lower operation costs.
There are cool benefits for you, too. You know how you never know what hardware is below your public cloud VMs? And you can’t figure out if you are getting the full resources you’re paying for? Well, with Managed EdgeCloud and Zenoss software, your service provider can give you that familiar Zenoss console and an instant view all the way down to the silicon and metal your apps see.
Ready To Get Started?
Let us know. We can help you with Software-Defined IT Operations and identify a great Managed EdgeCloud provider, too.
