Cloud FAQ
With so much hype around cloud, finding the right solution for your cloud can be difficult—but it doesn’t have to be. Enjoy the security, performance and control of your datacenter bundled with the economics and agility of the public cloud, without compromise.
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What is cloud?
Cloud computing is an approach to computing that utilizes the efficient pooling of on-demand, self-managed virtual infrastructure, consumed as a service. Leverage your existing infrastructure investments and move to your cloud quickly, seamlessly and without limitations.
Cloud: Public vs. Private vs. Hybrid?
Public clouds offer IT resources as a service through external service providers and are shared across multiple organizations. Because of the scale, these services are cost efficient for the consumers.
Private clouds, or internal clouds, operate on private networks so resources are only accessible by a single company. Many organizations are beginning to implement private cloud platforms to transform their private traditional infrastructure into a service delivery mechanism. This enables the organization to benefit from the agility of cloud computing but with a higher degree of control and security than public clouds that do not operate on the same level. In a private cloud, the consumers of the services are typically the organization’s lines of business.
An enterprise hybrid cloud combines the security and performance capabilities of your existing datacenter environment with the economics and agility of a public cloud without any compromises to control or security. In the hybrid scenario, organizations can move workloads into and back out of public clouds as needed. As the global leader in virtualization and cloud infrastructure, VMware is the only company in the market that offers a true enterprise hybrid cloud—one that leverages your existing IT investments and aligns seamlessly with the unique needs and goals of your enterprise.
Examples of some workloads that can benefit from this model are development workloads and some production workloads where a Service Provider can meet SLAs and security compliance requirements for those workloads. Transient workloads (workloads that grow and shrink dynamically), that may temporarily grow beyond their private infrastructures capabilities also benefit from hybrid clouds. As the global leader in virtualization and cloud infrastructure, VMware is the only company in the market that offers a true enterprise hybrid cloud—one that leverages your existing IT investments and aligns seamlessly with the unique needs and goals of your enterprise.
What are the advantages?
The core advantages of cloud computing are the economics of choice and the speed of innovation. It also drives down maintenance and management costs, allowing businesses to redirect saved funds into innovation-centered projects. By allowing IT organizations to anticipate and respond to business needs more quickly and efficiently, cloud computing creates competitive advantage.
Which cloud is right for me?
There are three general deployment models to consider: private, public and hybrid. Nearly half of all enterprise IT organizations start with private clouds. But, there’s also growing interest in public clouds due to their attractive rate card. Regardless of what deployment model you start with, make sure that you lay the foundation for a hybrid cloud so you don’t limit your possibilities. The hybrid cloud offers the best of both worlds with the security and performance of your existing datacenter combined with the economics and agility of the public cloud. With the VMware enterprise hybrid cloud architecture, you can realize the full potential of cloud—without any compromises.
How are clouds managed?
Through automation and well-established policies and protocols, IT can maintain and improve management and governance capabilities within the cloud. The VMware cloud management solution decouples the management of applications and infrastructure to help you assure compliance and performance despite growing service level expectations. You’ll also get freedom of choice through management interoperability with ecosystem partners and cloud interoperability across service providers. With a foundation of VMware vSphere® and VMware vCloud® Director, you can pool virtual infrastructure resources in your existing datacenter and empower users to deploy pre-configured services or custom-built services with the click of a button.
How secure is my data?
The vast majority of enterprises cite security as a top concern for moving to the cloud. However, 88% of our market survey respondents indicated that they would adopt cloud if the level of security was the same as or better than in their current internal datacenter. The real issue is ensuring consistent security across physical, virtual and cloud-based infrastructures as well as different cloud computing environments – whether public, private or hybrid. VMware’s cloud computing solution is designed to provide auditable physical and logical security controls, “follow the app” virtual security, and role-based access controls that integrate with your own enterprise directory.
What about my current investment?
With multiple cloud deployment models and countless vendors to choose from, you need to ensure that the decisions you make today will allow the flexibility to grow and adapt as business requirements change. We help you extend the value of your existing infrastructure investments, so there’s no need to rip and replace. The VMware vCloud® family of products allows you to seamlessly move to private, public or hybrid clouds when you are ready.
How important is virtualization?
Leading industry analysts, along with 95% of companies who participated in a recent market survey believe virtualization is critical to cloud computing and serves as the foundation and enabler to cloud computing as well as to IT as a Service overall.
What about my current investment?
With multiple cloud deployment models and countless vendors to choose from, you need to ensure that the decisions you make today will allow the flexibility to grow and adapt as business requirements change. We help you extend the value of your existing infrastructure investments, so there’s no need to rip and replace. The VMware vCloud® family of products allows you to seamlessly move to private, public or hybrid clouds when you are ready.
What are the business benefits?
While cost advantages are often an attractive driver for IT organizations to consider cloud, there are far bigger advantages. Business agility is a key factor that shouldn’t be overlooked or underestimated. It improves time to market, customer responsiveness and operational efficiency. Incorporate these benefits when building your business case, and educate your key stakeholders and management.
What are the non-technology challenges?
In addition to technology considerations, you should also be aware of cloud’s impact on process, governance, architecture, staffing and the link between IT capabilities and business goals. According to our survey respondents, over 70% ranked strategy as the most important non-technology challenge to get right from the start. To successfully prepare to adopt a cloud solution, you should have a thorough understanding of its business requirements, features, functions and benefits. We can help accelerate the success of your cloud initiatives with a range of services to assess, architect and deploy the right solution for your business.
Is there a unified cloud operating system?
Cloud computing should be a platform that provides pooling of resources, on-demand self service, rapid elastic workload provisioning, and metered services. That platform should package and provide infrastructure as well as applications as services, as well as be open and allow free movement of workloads between public and private clouds. VMware believes that the underpinning of Cloud Computing should be a platform that allows multiple operating systems or slim operating environments, purpose-built for their workloads. These can then be packaged, deployed, and migrated between various clouds. VMware has pioneered the open certification of the DMTF Open Virtualization Format (OVF – http://www.dmtf.org/standards/ovf), which allows workloads of various operating systems to move from one cloud platform to another, to realize the true concept of hybrid cloud. As the global leader in virtualization and cloud infrastructure, VMware is the only company in the market that offers a true enterprise hybrid cloud—one that leverages your existing IT investments and aligns seamlessly with the unique needs and goals of your enterprise.
Is the cloud really going to save me money?
Cloud computing promises to bring cost reduction and increased business agility to businesses. Read the case studies for how others are saving money from cloud computing:
Teradata: http://campaign.vmware.com/imgs/campaigns/cloud/nam/site/assets/VMW_CS_TERADATA_CORP.pdf
Marian College: http://campaign.vmware.com/imgs/campaigns/cloud/nam/site/assets/VMW_CS_Marian_College.pdf
