Over last couple of years, cloud computing and virtualization has become one of the major technological trends that enables most promising IT solutions. The value of cloud computing and virtualization is quite clear: reduction of CAPEX (capital expenditures) by providing computing resources on an as needed basis and reduction of OPEX (operational expenditures) by maximizing the utilizations of IT infrastructure. The utilization rate going from single digit to 60-70% is not uncommon using carefully designed cloud and virtualization solutions.
So what are the experiences and patterns that are emerging from the adoption of cloud computing and virtualization?
Client side (Desktop) vs. Server Side Virtualization:
The growth of cloud computing on server side has been a spectacular 1000% over the last one year. Compared to that, desktop virtualization seems quite negligible. This makes perfect sense as the server side infrastructure remains stable and is heavy on investment.
Core vs. Non-core Applications in public clouds:
Most of the applications that are moving to public clouds in the first wave are non-core applications, e.g. applications for development and testing purposes or applications that do not contain sensitive data. Not that core applications cannot be or should not be hosted in public clouds. Most of the organizations are starting with non-cores applications first to get used to public cloud environments. Once they see value and become confident of public clouds, even core applications get moved there as concerns such as security, privacy and governance get resolved in early pilots.
Private vs. Public Cloud: What type of cloud one should select? This is a relatively complex decision. There are many factors that play a part, core vs. non-core application, security & privacy concerns for the application, governance issues, size of organization, growth of company (and supporting IT infrastructure). It has been observed that lot of companies are adopting a hybrid approach. The hybrid approach certainly provides lot more flexibility to an organization. In general, companies that are smaller in size tend to lean more towards public clouds as it provides them a low capital expenditure solution with options to grow rapidly. Companies that are sensitive towards security and privacy tend to adopt private clouds.
Holistic vs. partial Cloud Adoption: It has been observed that the approach towards adopting cloud should not be piecemeal. An organization should not look at one project only and try to optimize it. By taking that approach, operational cost of that project might become lower but overall costs of the organization might become higher. It is in many cases critical that one looks at the portfolio of projects holistically from a cloud enablement perspective and then drive the execution plan from there.
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