As you may recall, at the beginning of 2011 we polled over 500 CTOs, developers and IT professionals asking them about various aspects of cloud computing. Questions included: What is cloud computing and how do you use it?, What security measures do you require in the cloud? and many more. The data from this cloud survey report provides a good idea of the current cloud computing landscape and upcoming trends as we race towards 2012.

Continuing on in the series, we wanted to know what IT professionals thought of cloud computing’s latest innovation: the private cloud. Private clouds have quickly become the topic of much conversation in the industry because they offer core public cloud technology but within a single-tenant environment. Before we jump into the results of our question, What aspects of the private cloud are most important to your organization?, it is important to have a clear understanding of what private clouds are.

What are private clouds?

There are quite a few ways how private clouds differ from public cloud offerings but I won’t go into all of the differences within this post. As I mentioned above, there is the idea of tenancy. To broadly generalize, public clouds are multi-tenant and private clouds are single-tenant. To expand on this concept a bit more, public clouds provide shared resources for consumption by multiple companies or organizations within the same server cluster. However, these resources are dedicated and fully isolated to those users in that networking, storage, RAM and CPU units are allocated to those users. This is very different than traditional shared hosting or VPS’s (Virtual Private Servers) – shared or VPS environments can, at times, suffer from over-allocation of resources or degraded performance if one user on a particular “machine” is “hogging” those resources. Public clouds effectively isolate those resources so that customers don’t experience usage hogs.

Private clouds are essentially public clouds but in an environment dedicated to one company, thus “single-tenant.” That does not mean though, that a private cloud cannot host multiple departments or business units from that single organization. Basically, a private cloud dedicates all of the resources to a single company or corporation and serves just that organization. The computer, storage and networking resources are most likely either owned by that organization, hosted by that organization or running exclusively for that organization but managed by another vendor (see GoGrid’s Hosted Private Cloud).

Private clouds frequently come at a higher cost than traditional public clouds mainly because public clouds give you economies of scale via larger infrastructure installations. Some companies may prefer operating in a non-shared environment due the higher amounts of control that they have on the infrastructure and the hardware or due to compliance or regulatory concerns.

It is also important to note that some private clouds operate the same way as a public cloud. But difference do emerge between popular types of private clouds: in-house vs. hosted private clouds. With hosted private clouds, there is no need for on-premise hardware and capital expenditure. In-house private cloud frequently come with some sort of a capital expenditure and may have additional costs that you need to carefully evaluate. Any vendor who offers on-premise solutions under the “private cloud” label cloud really be offering a “false” cloud as they don’t follow the characteristics of cloud computing.

If you want to understand more about public, private and hosted private cloud, be sure to read our white paper titled “Skydiving Through the Clouds“. The comparison matrix below is from the white paper.

The Survey Results

Let’s jump to the question and the results from our 500 respondents.

Obviously the single-tenancy and non-shared resources top the list of most important private cloud features. As the chart shows, the majority of our respondents found private cloud offerings beneficial to their business – so much so that only 11.9% felt that private cloud was not an important feature for their company.

What is interesting is how important Firewalls (e.g., security) is of top-of-mind concern. As a side note, you can actually use a hardware firewall with GoGrid’s public cloud. (See our Fortinet and Cisco ASA offerings.) Note: not many public clouds actually offer this service.

Next time, as we continue on in this series, we’ll be focusing on which operating systems are most important to the IT industry and business critical applications.

For more information on our survey methodology or to see all of our results, please download the Cloud Survey Report.

Whether you’re a small, medium or enterprise company using cloud solutions, using secure Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) is a must. A couple weeks ago I shared some survey data showing you the average security and compliance requirements from professionals in the IT industry. The results of the survey clearly shows that security is a forethought for most businesses, but just like the term “cloud”, “security” can be a bit of a buzz word if not given proper context.

When thinking about security and potentially compliance within an IT environment, there are a lot of important items to consider; some of these can be “offloaded” to your provider, but others are your own undertaking completely. Start by asking yourself the following questions:

1. Who is your “customer”? – Is your customer, your end user? Or is it your internal organization? More than likely, it is both. Do these “customers” require different levels of security? If so, what are they?
2. What level of security is “acceptable”? – This varies from company to company. Some organizations like healthcare or government must adhere to extremely strict security (and compliance) requirements, while other businesses might have more leeway when it comes to protecting their assets.
3. Who in your organization is responsible for security? – Is there a particular team that is tasked with not only determining the security requirements, but also maintaining and auditing those requirements and activities over time?
4. Is physical security required? – Do you need to physically audit and control your environment? Remember, while clouds are highly virtualized or abstracted, the providers are physical entities. Does your cloud environment need to be physically isolated from other cloud environments? (If so, you might want to consider a Hosted Private Cloud)
5. Does your company have their security best practices carefully documented? – If they do, you should review it with a critical eye to ensure that it reflects changes in technologies.

To the last point above, the most important philosophy for businesses to understand is that security isn’t a destination – it is a process that takes constant iteration and innovation. Regardless what cloud provider you use (or even if you use traditional in-house infrastructure), this mentality is important to maintaining infrastructure security and compliance.

There are two core levels where security is critical:

1. Your Cloud (or hosting) provider
2. Within your organization

As most hosting or cloud organizations build their business around providing secure services, you would think that this would be a no-brainer. For the most part, it is, provided that you do choose a reputable vendor whose core competency is focused on delivering these services. However, many security failures actually happen because a customer stopped at that point and merely assumed that because they chose a secure provider, that all threats would be neutralized. If you don’t set up security best practices WITHIN those environments, you could be leaving your infrastructure vulnerable. Remember, your security is only as good as the best practices your organization implements.

Assuming that you have implemented these best practices, achieving compliance is much more straight forward. Compliance, as I mentioned, does depend on the vertical and your business and what that industry requires, so there is no clear-cut golden checklist of things you should do that can be boiled down into just a few bullet points. However, doing your research and documenting the process is a great first step.

Even if you have selected a cloud provider with a deep commitment to security, it is also important for businesses to understand what hardware and software components are necessary to protect their data.

In order to help businesses learn about security and compliance in the cloud, GoGrid created a white paper entitled, “Cloud Infrastructure Security and Compliance,” which is a primer for explaining security architecture, data security and role-based user management. If you have any doubts or questions about security in the cloud, this free white paper is a great source of information that can bring more clarity.

Download the Cloud Infrastructure Security & Compliance Whitepaper

Managing your own infrastructure isn’t an easy thing. You have to spend hours, days or weeks planning your specific needs, deploying the right hardware for your use cases (which you also have to pay for), and hiring a team to manage the hardware and operations. Making those types of projections or even “predictions” is kind of like gazing into a crystal ball at times. But what if your infrastructure needs change? Your business is hopefully growing and your infrastructure needs to match your success. Well, as you grow, you have to run through that whole process all over again. You have to plan, deploy and manage; and each of these tasks has a significant cost, not only from a monetary standpoint, but also in terms of project management, human capital and your sanity as a whole.

The main principle behind Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) is to develop a simpler process to address your IT needs and ensure that it takes less time to plan, manage and deploy – saving you time and money in the end. The question isn’t, “Can cloud computing save you time or money?” because we all know the answer to that. Yes. Of course it can! The real question is, “How much time and money can you save with cloud computing?”

In order to find that answer, you need to have a clear understanding of the benefits of cloud computing and where the real savings come into play. I go over this in great detail in my white paper, Skydiving Through The Clouds. Below are some of the ways companies benefit from transitioning to cloud based infrastructure.

• Economies of Scale – underutilization and misappropriated hardware become a thing of the past. The cloud enables compute, storage and RAM resources to be more efficiently managed, provisioned and scaled, all within a shared environment.
• Cost Control – knowing exactly what you are using and how much that usage will cost you allows for a much stricter control over expenditures.
• “Disposable IT” – companies have the ability to create, use and destroy infrastructure based on their business needs.
• Burstable Workloads– scaling based on demand allows organizations to efficiently use infrastructure in a timely basis.
• Avoiding Capital Expenditure – with cloud computing, infrastructure becomes an operating expense with no need to amortize hardware costs over time.

John Keagy, GoGrid’s Executive Chair and Founder, also jumped in on the conversation a couple weeks ago where he shared what is fact and what is fiction regarding the economics of IaaS in an article entitled The Actual Truth About The Economics of Cloud Computing.

Some cloud providers, like GoGrid, also make very easy to determine what your total operating expenditure will be with cloud hosting calculators. Our tool gives estimated monthly costs based on your infrastructure needs and usage. Remember, GoGrid is “Complex Infrastructure Made Easy™” so we can definitely help you plan out your cloud computing strategy and rollout in a way that is understandable and doable.

Now, I’d like to hear from you. If you are already using cloud infrastructure, how much time and money have you saved since the switch? How are you using the cloud to make your IT-rollouts more cost effective? If you’re still managing your own infrastructure, how much do you estimate you could save by switching to a cloud hosted solution?

Share your answers in the comment section below.

Look forward to seeing your answers!

So you’re looking at purchasing cloud infrastructure for your business? That’s great! While we believe cloud infrastructure is a viable solution for everybody, each company needs to find an implementation and provider that best meets their specific need. We call it crafting your “Cloud Fingerprint“. Every cloud infrastructure solution is unique to the business looking for a solution. If you choose a provider that tries to convince you that their solution is the only way to go, you might want to consider looking around for another vendor. Your cloud provider should really be your cloud partner. And, they should work with you in crafting your unique cloud solution, not try to jam a round peg into a square hole.

Before breaking out the checkbook there are several things to consider internally and questions you should ask your potential cloud provider to make sure you are getting the best solution for your business.

Internal Question for your Company

Cloud infrastructure comes in many different shapes and sizes. Having a clear understanding of how your organization will be using this infrastructure will help narrow down which providers will have solutions that fit your need. Here are some questions to ask yourself before approaching vendors:

1. What appliances (e.g., servers, load balancers, firewalls, networks, etc.) need to be supported?Every infrastructure topology is unique, just like your business. In order to create the best infrastructure solution, you need to consider what virtual and physical appliances are required or optional to your cloud solution.
2. What security requirements do you have? Is a shared environment acceptable or does your cloud infrastructure need to be single-tenant?Cloud computing can come in multi-tenant and single-tenant options. Single-tenant infrastructures are 100% dedicated to your company, but they do come with an additional price. And within public clouds, you can segment off a portion of your infrastructure (e.g., dedicated or colocated environments) that is single-tenant (see Hybrid Hosting).
3. What are some of the different use cases that need to be supported?Understanding how much computing power your company needs, when your company needs it (seasonal) and which departments will use cloud infrastructure is useful in selecting cloud infrastructure packages. Your first step is to clearly define these business models and use cases so that a custom solution can be created to meet your needs.
4. Who will manage the implementation?Many companies are happy with a do-it-yourself option in terms of creating a cloud infrastructure for their company. But there are plenty of time and cost constraints that come with these types of implementation. You can also choose a cloud provider that consults with you to understand and help you implement your environments in the most cost and time-effective way. And once the implementation is live, who will be there to support it? Your internal team or the cloud provider? (Be sure to look at SLAs as well.)
5. Are there regulatory requirements to consider?If there are compliance, regulatory requirements or unique/customer hardware considerations that are critical to your cloud implementation, be sure to map those out ahead of time.

Questions to Ask your Cloud Provider

Now that you know exactly what YOU are looking for, it’s time to find a cloud provider that builds solutions tailored to your needs. Simply sharing your business’s needs to an infrastructure-as-a-service vendor will get you recommendations and solutions, but they may come with some unexpected surprises. It’s a best practice to know the vendors process and procedure to make the purchase and implementation as smooth as possible. Here are some things to consider:

1. Is it a scalable solution from both a company-installation standpoint and an end-user usage standpoint?You need to be sure that whatever cloud provider (or partner) you choose can grow with your business, otherwise you do not get the advantages of cloud computing. Is your cloud partner large enough to scale with your needs? And can users of your cloud account scale the infrastructure as well on-demand and just pay for what they use? (Beware of the “false cloud” where you have to shell out money in terms of capital expenditure – buying hardware to power your cloud is NOT cloud computing.)
   
2. Are they simply a reseller of someone else’s technology or are they an innovator in the space?Several of the big players in the cloud space are simply resellers of Infrastructure as a Service. Or, they have an older infrastructure solution and they are simply slapping the word “cloud” in front of it (this is known as “cloud washing.”) If your needs are simple, they can be great partners. If your computing needs are more complex, it makes sense to partner with a company who is considered an innovator.
3. Do they require capital expenditures?Believe it or not, several cloud providers will require capital expenditure and on-site hardware. Again, it is not a cloud solution if you have to buy hardware to power it and then manage that infrastructure yourself (“false cloud”). Having to buy physical hardware to power and grow your company’s “cloud solution” really just causes more work for your IT staff and isn’t cloud computing.
4. Do they provide technical expertise when creating the implementation?The hardest part of cloud computing is the implementation or migration process. Make sure you have the support you need during the transition. Will your cloud partner help you overcome any technical hurdles or offer best practices?
5. Is their offering based on industry standards or are you required to architect your infrastructure design to meet THEIR requirements?This is big. Some cloud providers require you to re-architect your infrastructure design to meet the requirements of their stack. This can often lead to more work for your company.

We hope that these questions will help you find the right solution for your company when you are looking to acquire cloud infrastructure. We’ve identified even more considerations in our white paper, “Skydiving Through the Clouds”.

Download “Skydiving Through the Clouds”

The word “cloud” has become a bit of a buzzword in the IT industry. Well, let me rephrase that, it has become a HUGE and overused buzzword not just within various tech sectors, it has also infiltrated the lives of us all. A year or two ago, if you mentioned “cloud” or even “cloud computing” to the average passerby, they might have looked back at you with a cloudy look on their face (sorry). Terms like “public cloud,” “private cloud,” “hybrid cloud” and “false cloud” are currently thrown around and peppered throughout conversations. And now, especially exemplified by Microsoft’s recent ad campaign, the phrase “To the cloud!” seems to have brought clouds to everyone, including the general public.

We are being bombarded from every angle. So what do they mean?

Some seem to be useful in our everyday lives:

Others seem to be a bit ominous (as is seen in this tweet from Marc Benioff – Chairman & CEO of SalesForce.com):

But even with everyone talking about “clouds” now, they are still confusing.

The truth is, clouds can take on many different forms, shapes, sizes and characteristics.

“Cloud” is one of the most confusing terms currently in the computing world, but we aim to clear up this nebulous term. Today we release a new white paper titled “Skydiving Through the Clouds” which explains what clouds are, how they work, who uses them and why they are becoming of growing importance within the IT industry.

Download “Skydiving Through the Clouds”