ISME Magazine -Issue 39 webview (1)

The Latest Cloud
Computing Changes
Shaping the Market
Many companies are now looking to refactor apps to effectively run on the public
cloud systems. This would help leverage migration services and it works better
than simply dumping apps into a public cloud.
The fact that business
today operates
completely on cloud is
no longer ‘news’. Cloud
computing is a necessity, an
expertise in which determines the
success of a business.
The New Wave
There is a second wave in the
cloud computing market that is
affecting the public, private and
hybrid cloud services. Many
enterprises are now building
private services or procuring
public cloud services. There are
still other enterprises that are
planning on implementing new
cloud technology.
Companies like Google,
Microsoft and IBM are opening
data centres to lure big
companies to their cloud. There
are also many speciality clouds
that have cropped up recently
after Amazon’s venture into
cloud computing services. These
developments in the market
makes it imperative for CIOs to
not only adopt but also catch up
with the new cloud strategies that
is changing the business scene.
There are basically six trends that
are reshaping the second wave
in the market of cloud adoption.
A Rise in Co-Location
Services:
Running one’s own data
centre is a lot of work! It also
eats away a lot of time of CIOs.
This has increasingly made them
avoid a possibility of running
data centres. However, it is not
easy to decide on a particular
cloud given that there are so
many options to choose from.
This has resulted in CIOs turning
to co-location services. Colocations
like Equinix and Digital
Realty, etc. allow a business
to move their systems to a
managed data centre, where
they can get all the benefits that
come from various public clouds
and also SaaS services.
Co-location services also help
businesses to test and try the
cloud before deciding on what
works best for them. A CIO who
is unsure about a cloud service
can easily test services from
Azure, AWS or Google Cloud
without the need to be committed
until they feel their business is
ready to move.
Cost Containment
Tools:
Cloud cost management
is a factor that is increasingly
getting complex. This results
in businesses that engage
with multiple cloud provider
get really confused with cloud
vendor management – reason
being many vendors themselves
are inexperienced. The huge
corporations like AWS etc. do
not make things any better what
with their many cloud services
consumption plans. CIOs who
have used the services of
AWS knows that they charge
customers for the cloud services
by the number of messages
exchanged and in some cases
messages exchanged in an
hour.
Interestingly because of this
complexity companies have
started the trend to hire a Cloud
Architect who can help choose
the correct cloud services
and negotiate contracts. All
of this has given rise to cloud
cost management tools like
Cloudability, Cloud cruiser and
Cloudyn.
The Rise of
Hyperconverge
Infrastructure Solutions:
Businesses are often tempted to
move to public clouds given the
fact that it makes things easy for
them. But not all CIOs are allured
by the risks to their company
data that a shift to a public
cloud or a third-party vendor
brings with it. Managing private
clouds on the other hand brings a
lot of expenses. Mostly because
a private cloud comes with the
costs of virtualization, automation,
standardization, resource
monitoring and self-service access
etc.
This is where the
Hyperconverged Infrastructure
solutions comes in. This provides:
a. Pre-integrated compute
b. Storage and Networking
Resources
c. Faster Cloud Implementations
The benefits of HCI has made
it increasingly popular with
organizations for their private cloud
development.
Use of Containers:
Containers are the latest
development that has made
its presence felt in the world of
Cloud Computing. Containers is
basically a process that allows for
a reliable software transfer from
one computing system to another.
Developers all over are increasingly
making use of containers to migrate
and manage software code. Their
popularity and ease of usage has
made many companies use it to
enable portability between services
from the big corporations like AWS,
Google Cloud etc.
Container Development is
one trend that is catching up on
the Cloud Computing world.
However, the usage of
containers also opens a new
dimension where companies
need to struggle with fresh
security, monitoring, storage
and networking problems.
These problems will continue
to rise as containers start to be
used extensively in production
all over.
Lift and Shift Tools:
The lift and shift tools is
another popular tool that has
arrived in the cloud computing
world. This tool allows one
to accelerate the pace of
cloud migration. For the bulk
application migrations it comes
with a very low cost feature.
Many companies are now
looking to refactor apps to
effectively run on the public
cloud systems. This would help
leverage migration services
and it works better than simply
dumping apps into a public
cloud. The lift and shift tools
are costly but then it helps a
business to take maximum
advantage of cloud’s elasticity
feature.
Enterprise Apps Moving to
Public Cloud:
Using public cloud is convenient.
Many CIOs are comfortable with
hosting software in the public cloud.
Spark Analytics, Splunk and SAP
to name a few are software that
companies prefer to run in AWS.
This is a trend that is catching up
fast with all companies. There is a
growing trend that CIOs will start
to rely even more in the future on
the services of the Public Cloud
Providers.
The business world is evolving
every moment. It was not long ago
that cloud computing started as a
concept. Looking at the scenario
now it seems like it has been in
the business world forever. Some
even question the possibility of
doing business without a cloud
computing system. It is important
for businesses now to know the
trending changes that shape the
digital market world. We have looked
at the six trends that has reached
the cloud computing market today.
Rest assured that these will soon
be history and there will be fresh,
more advanced trends to look out
for. The only mantra that would
work today is ‘Keep looking, keep
implementing and keep evolving
with the changes.’
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Intelligent SME December 2017
Technology 19