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Enterprise Application Strategy Using the Cloud

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Cloud computing and SaaS have gained considerable momentum over the last few years. Although companies are adopting cloud and SaaS technology, there is great confusion over the applications in which cloud can serve an organization. Organizations are left with endless questions about security, infrastructure options, scalability, administration and business agility.

While application programming interfaces (APIs) have improved from many vendors, going cloud does not eliminate the need for integration and/or middleware. Some smart platform-as-a-service (PaaS) vendors have architected middleware right into their technology stack. This gives the organization a more robust cloud platform in which to architect an enterprise application strategy.

Cloud and SaaS can play an important part of the organizational IT strategy, especially for mid-sized companies that are strapped for resources. The secret of implementing the correct software or technology solution is always to ask what this can do for the organization. A few questions to begin designing your enterprise application strategy include: Will this assist us in facilitating growth? What are my organizational needs, now and in the future? Is it scalable? Should we use full cloud? Can we supplement our existing systems by using the cloud? Can we use the cloud to unify disparate systems? Can we sustain this solution and maintain it?

Cloud does not necessarily complicate your enterprise app strategy. In fact, it can aid in quickly constructing a scalable, agile business infrastructure to adapt to your quickly changing business requirements. While it is convenient for organizations to select one vendor on which to base their infrastructure strategy, collaboration in the cloud ecosystem is rapidly changing. Infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) firms are partnering with PaaS and consequently adding complimentary applications (SaaS) to offer a complete infrastructure strategy framework for organizations.

In the case of best of breed vs. integrated suite, the landscape has changed so much and so rapidly that it really boils down to what the objectives of the organization are. Our customers are using cloud to quickly add functionality, scale or unite their systems. We have several dozen posts on how to unify disparate systems, how companies are using cloud, cloud/SaaS software evaluation etc. If an organization selects a vendor that offers IaaS, PaaS and SaaS, it does simplify the infrastructure application strategy equation. The cloud technology stack can be a combination of SOA and other methods as outlined recently on our blog and ERP Cloud/SaaS Research buyers guide.

Organizations must exercise caution as to how they configure their enterprise application strategy whether it is on-premise, cloud (private or public) or a combination, and what kind of business agility it offers. Cloud has definitely opened an opportunity for more organizations as an easy point of entry but the advice for enterprise infrastructure strategy should be taken seriously as it will affect the ability of your organization to run effectively. Thoroughly investigate the expertise of your providers and make sure they have your best interests at heart. An impartial firm that does not sell or implement software is probably the best bet to succeed as they will define, aggregate and configure your organizational objectives to best fit your requirements.

Author: Dylan Persaud
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How Small Business Benefit from Life in the Clouds

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Small business (SME) are increasingly acknowledging the power of working in the cloud. At a time of ongoing economic uncertainty, cloud computing technology has the great benefit of being low-cost; easy to implement and use; flexible and scalable.

Today, many of these businesses are actively developing their own cloud applications and tailoring them to their precise needs. Indeed, cloud-based application development is particularly well suited to the SME community for which time and resources are often at a premium.

Estimates suggest it is possible for SMEs to build applications about five times as quickly and at half the cost of using traditional software platforms – particularly critical as the business grows.

The approach enables SMEs to rapidly deliver an initial build of key applications and then add functionality quickly. Developing in the cloud significantly reduces the up-front capital required to get a business on its feet and frees start-ups and small businesses from the requirement to purchase expensive and complex hardware and software solutions.

Delivering a Combination of Flexibility and Agility

Flexibility is of course key for SMEs. Today, the best custom application development platforms allow developers to adapt applications to the needs of their organisation across a range of business functions from technical field service offerings for mobile workers to email marketing for marketers and asset management for banks.

This flexibility is most clearly seen in the functionality that can be added to application development platforms today. Examples include the opportunity to run applications on any platform or device – from the iPhone to the iPad to the BlackBerry – and the ability to integrate collaboration features to every application.

This can be an important benefit for SMEs with busy, mobile workforces that need access to information anytime, anywhere together with the ability to remain productive even while on the move.

SMEs also benefit from the use of open systems and platforms rather than closed proprietary systems that tie them to a particular vendor. This is particularly critical when constructing application development platforms in the cloud. If these platforms are genuinely ‘open’ and developers are able to leverage familiar widely used languages like Java and Ruby, then the pace of development quickens while its quality rises also. For the SME, this can be key in boosting flexibility and driving competitive edge.

Integration and Interoperability

Linked with the theme of openness is ease of integration into a company’s existing IT architecture – crucial if these kinds of development platforms are to fully support business agility for SMEs and large enterprises alike.

Today, cloud computing platforms exist which offer “no compromise customisations” – fast and easy adaptation of the solution to a company’s business process while also enabling deeper integration as and when required. The philosophy should be to keep simple adjustments simple and to make complex functional and technical requirements achievable and accessible.

Being able to easily bring different applications together should be another key objective of any successful IT strategy. It remains an elusive goal for many SMEs but one they should not view as out of reach. Cloud services that incorporate open internet standards-based APIs (application programming interfaces) using SOAP and REST, which are accessible through web services enable diverse systems to easily communicate together. This allows SMEs to align their organisations with their strategic goals to drive competitive advantage.

The best application development platforms should not only provide the chance for SMEs to develop new applications but also reduce the effort usually associated with integrating cloud computing applications with existing technology.

A New Approach

Over the years, the traditional way of creating and running business applications has become complex and cumbersome – particularly for hard-pressed SMEs. Cloud computing coupled with a flexible application development platform provides a solution to this previously intractable problem, helping to deliver innovation and fast time to value.

Developers working for SMEs just need an Internet connection to gain access to an application development environment with all the tools and resources they need. As a result they can develop complete enterprise applications without the cost and complexity of buying and maintaining on-premises development infrastructure, in turn speeding the response to user requests, and delivering the IT agility required to drive rapid business growth and quickly take advantage of new business opportunities.

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Cloud Computing: A Shift From IT Luxury to Business Necessity

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Cloud computing may be defined as location independent computing whereby shared servers — for the purposes of this article, external to the enterprise — provide resources, software, and data to computers and other devices on demand. Cloud computing may have started out as an emerging trend that only IT professionals could get excited about (or fear), but it has quickly become one of the most important paradigm shifts in business today. C-suite executives on both sides of the supply chain, investors, and government agencies now recognize the potential that cloud computing has to change how organizations operate at the highest level — from staffing and revenue models to their relationships with and expectations of customers, employees, shareholders, and more.

As such, it should come as no surprise that industry analyst firm Gartner predicts spending on cloud computing applications to increase at an annual rate of 20 percent, growing to a market of $150 billion by 2013. Organizations from The Brookings Institution to MITRE to the GSA are exploring and promoting the topic, and Vivek Kundra, the first federal Chief Information Officer, recently implemented a “cloud first” policy for the federal government. Understanding and embracing cloud computing has become an imperative.

Silicon Valley-based Appirio, a cloud solution provider that has helped hundreds of large enterprises adopt cloud computing, has had its fingers on the pulse of “the cloud” for the last four years. The change, over even the last two years, has been dramatic.

A few years ago, cloud computing or Software-as-a-Service was simply a means of lowering costs at a time when the economy was frail and budget increases were nowhere to be seen. That necessity resulted in highlighting cloud computing as a way to do much more — to become more agile, innovative, and competitive. Previously, cloud projects were primarily driven outside IT on an ad hoc basis. Now IT is — and will continue to be — the owner of cloud success. And now that cloud computing is outside the small realm of early adopters, we are seeing the extraordinary business potential it has to offer — and the new challenges it will bring.

A recent study from Appirio, conducted by an independent third-party market research firm, of 155 IT decision makers (at companies with >500 employees) who had already adopted one or more cloud applications provides some empirical evidence along these lines.

Cloud Computing is a Business Imperative, not an IT Luxury

Cloud computing is changing the way businesses run — not just the processes enabled by specific applications, but businesses themselves. Eighty-two percent of cloud adopters in the survey report that cloud computing helped them achieve a specific business objective. In a world where most IT projects do not deliver, this is astonishing. Eighty-three percent of cloud adopters agree that cloud solutions have helped them respond more quickly to the needs of their business. Critical from a structural perspective, cloud computing makes businesses more agile by, for example, dramatically decreasing the marginal costs of engaging particular services on an on-demand basis. Business agility has become the number one reason that companies migrate to the cloud, easily outpacing each of the following: cutting costs; enabling a mobile workforce; reducing the costs of technology ownership; and converting capital expenditure to operating expenses. This shift in philosophy — centered around cloud computing as the path to new innovation and corporate growth — signifies that cloud computing has “tipped” irrevocably into the realm of those technology solutions that must be factored into business strategy.

Cloud Computing Allows IT Decision Makers to Drive Business Strategy

As was recently argued in The Huffington Post, in order to become pivotal business leaders, CIOs must promote tighter alignment between IT and organizational business units, downplay marginal cost cutting as a metric of success, and constantly think about the long-term growth of the enterprise. Cloud computing can play a big supporting role in these objectives. Seventy percent of cloud adopters in Appirio’s survey agree that cloud applications and platforms have changed the role of IT within the enterprise, making it a true enabler of growth. And when asked who drives cloud decisions, 30 percent responded that the traditional C-suite (CEO/CFO/COO) pushed the ball forward, with IT identified by the remaining 70 percent as the primary driver (79 percent said IT will be the primary driver in the future). As stated above, the distinction between IT (e.g., the CIO) and business strategy itself will continue to collapse such that the CIO and the traditional C-suite will work in tandem, with the latter often deferring to the former.

Cloud Adoption — It’s Still Early in the Game

Cloud computing maybe be top of mind for many, but to be clear, it’s still early in the game. We’ve already seen the tenor of conversations changing now that cloud projects are getting proven out. Much of the early cloud coverage centered on traditional IT concerns such as security, fear of vendor lock-in, availability and reliability of solutions maintained beyond the firewall (i.e. outside IT’s control). But as Appirio’s survey illustrates, cloud adopters have a considerably different view. When asked about each of the issues mentioned above, a compelling majority of cloud adopter respondents said cloud applications were either better or “significantly better” than their in-house alternatives. Experience breeds familiarity and confidence, both critical to debunking exaggerated misconceptions.

It makes sense. Someone who has traveled by airplane has a different view of the world (literally) than someone who has not. And the traveler’s experience enables him to debunk common misconceptions and fears about myriad aspects of the journey.

However, cloud computing isn’t a panacea. Cloud adopters will want to improve the security, manageability, integration and data quality of their cloud applications and platforms — just as they would with on-premise systems (although one could argue large cloud providers like Google, Amazon and Salesforce.com have more money to invest in these areas than the average IT department, and more to lose if something goes wrong). In addition, with companies adopting more and more different cloud services, issues like cloud-to-cloud integration and the re-emergence of information silos across different cloud providers will need to be addressed. Companies will also need to focus on improving access to cloud apps and use productivity across different devices now that smart phones and tablets are gaining ground on PCs in the work world.

Of course the cloud isn’t new, it’s just new to business. As consumers we experienced the benefits of massive interconnected systems many years ago with the rise of the Internet. All of a sudden we could tap into resources far beyond ourselves to find out how to get to dinner, buy products at better prices, make smarter investments, share photos and video, and even connect more effectively with our social networks. While traditional business software vendors failed to make the connection, Google CEO Eric Schmidt began evangelizing the cloud for business as early as 2006. Since then we’ve witnessed a new generation of non traditional enterprise software leaders–companies like Google, Salesforce.com, and Amazon–rise and change the world for businesses all through the cloud. Businesses are now unlocking the extraordinary potential of the cloud – almost as fast as you.

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Demystifying Cloud in the Enterprise

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Excellent article on the way forward in cloud computing from here.

Probably the biggest inhibitor to adoption is the human factor. Cloud will displace skill sets within the IT organization and force a fusion of functions. We have seen this evolution happen with the adoption of virtualization, and IT organizations will continue to evolve with increased cloud adoption. Cloud computing will eventually just be considered a part of the IT department’s general plans for technological deployment.

Though evidence abounds of cloud computing moving from the hype stage to successful adoption and deployment, many enterprises are still not clear on how to adopt cloud and make it part of their enterprise IT strategies.

This is in part due to a misperception about what cloud computing is and the number of myths that still exist today about the cloud. While many of the concerns about cloud computing were once valid, all have been addressed and overcome so vigorously that cloud offerings today are often more robust than what any large enterprise could provide on its own.

Why Enterprise Cloud?

Cloud is causing a fundamental shift in IT. Today, IT organizations spend 70 percent of their time delivering services, while the remainder is spent on strategic initiatives. Cloud turns those numbers upside down, enabling IT organizations to deliver IT as a Service — freeing them to focus on strategic business initiatives, while delivering increased service levels, increased business agility and reduced costs.

Delivering more with less has been an ongoing challenge for IT organizations. The business demands higher service levels. IT, however, isn’t always funded to deliver. Cloud services offer a way for organizations to prioritize and reprioritize service levels, paying only for what they use, without having to maintain or incur upfront infrastructure costs. Cloud gives IT flexibility to re-appropriate resources as the business dictates.

Cloud computing alone will not create an agile business — but for the first time in a long time, it will make IT more flexible and more agile so it can respond more quickly to the needs of the business. Until now, IT has been working with fairly static infrastructures that are difficult and costly to change. Cloud computing removes those barriers and gives businesses the technical tools to become more agile.

Cloud also significantly reduces the cost structure of delivering IT services. 2011 is the year that “cloud economics gets switched on,” Forrester predicts in a recent blog post. “Being cheap is good. We all know the basics of cloud economics — pay only for what you use — but the mechanism isn’t the lesson; it’s just the tool.

Cloud economics 101 is matching elastic applications to cloud platforms and moving transient apps in and out so their costs are constantly returning to zero. Cloud economics 201is designing and optimizing applications to take greatest advantage. Cloud economics 301 is knowing when and which cloud to use for maximum profitability.”

What Is Hindering Cloud Adoption?

Cloud computing is delivering on its promise. However, there are still some doubts that are holding back adoption. The lack of standards, apprehension over security and control, as well as the human issues involved are all valid enterprise concerns.

Despite the efforts by the Cloud Security Alliance and other industry consortia, industry standards and best practices for cloud computing are a long way off. The market is still in its infancy and very fragmented.

Standards cannot be fully established and implemented until there is a critical mass of vendors and adopters reaching technical parity. Standards can only be established when markets cross the chasm and reach commoditized adoption.

“Don’t let that hold you back from using cloud technologies, though,” says Forrester, “as most are built on the backs of prior standards efforts. Existing security, Web services, networking, and protocol standards are all in use by clouds. And cloud management tools are doing their best to abstract the difference from cloud to cloud.”

There are several industry consortia, such as the Cloud Security Alliance and the Trusted Computing Group, that are working on developing security frameworks for various cloud computing models. They are addressing new security challenges introduced by virtualization, but at the same time porting some of those best practices they have been using in the physical/dedicated infrastructure world.

In 2011, “cloud security will be proven but not by the providers alone,” Forrester predicts. “Because cloud security isn’t their responsibility — it’s shared. The cloud-leading enterprises get this, and we have already seen HIPAA, PCI, and other compliance standards met in the cloud.”

Probably the biggest inhibitor to adoption is the human factor. Cloud will displace skill sets within the IT organization and force a fusion of functions. We have seen this evolution happen with the adoption of virtualization, and IT organizations will continue to evolve with increased cloud adoption.
Getting Started

Cloud computing will eventually just be considered a part of the IT department’s general plans for technological deployment. Here are three major steps that will get you there.

1. Develop a strategic road map — Understand your applications portfolio for existing set of workloads. Move applications that are not high security risks and learn from each tactical project. This will help you develop an overarching cloud strategy that is fine-tuned by lessons learned and the value gained from your tactical projects. Looking forward, plan for cloud-enabled IT for new applications.

2. Choose a partner — This is one of the most important decisions that you will make, so choose carefully. Look for a partner that has extensive application expertise as well as cloud expertise. Partners that understand what it takes to run your ERP, financials and messaging applications will have applications experts on staff that will be able to scale quickly and help you transition seamlessly.

Look for a partner that offers a set of Cloud Enablement Services (CES) to ease and accelerate migration to the cloud that include needs assessment, application on-boarding, tools to migrate on-premises environments to the cloud, ability to lock down environments for staging, ability to quickly cut over proven environments to production environments, and most importantly — responsive customer support.

3. Shift the Culture — IT is at an inflection point. Cloud computing will become pervasive, and it will ultimately displace people without the skill sets needed to evolve to this new paradigm.

The cloud also provides turn-key infrastructure for departments and business units that feel IT is not meeting their needs. These organizations will now have the resources to go “rogue” and go around IT and directly to cloud providers to meet their need — but this is to the detriment of the entire company. Companies will lose economies of scale, put data at risk and risk compliance.

The solution is for IT to embrace the cloud, partner with applications experts, and deliver nimble and flexible IT services to meet the business needs

meshIP is has extensive expertise at business process, application porting as well as cloud provisioning. Contact us to find out more about how we can assist you in your migration to the cloud.

Sunday Cloud Stats

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Quick cloud computing stats for a Sunday:

- CRN predicts that small business spending on Cloud Computing will hit $100 billion by 2014

- IDC estimates the market for public cloud products and services at $16B in 2010, growing to $56B by 2014

- Gartner estimates the Cloud market at $150B by 2013 while Merrill Lynch has it at 160B by 2011

- A recent survey of 500 IT decision-makers by SandHill found that ~50% of respondents cited business agility as their primary reason for adopting cloud applications

- Mobile and social computing are growing faster than anything before in the history of technology, and enterprise applications will need to adapt

- Gartner estimates that virtualization is growing rapidly and that by 2013, 60% of server workloads will be virtualized

- Public cloud infrastructure, applications and platforms are growing at 25%+ yet IDC projects that the market for enterprise servers will double by 2013

- A recent survey showed that every enterprise was using a SaaS application but less than a quarter of IT departments were aware that they were

Stats sourced from here