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Cloudburst
Cloudburst: beyond the hype of cloud computing

As trends in enterprise IT go, cloud computing has grown as quickly and loudly as the very best.  An idea that originated in the 1960s, it began to be taken seriously at an enterprise level in the late 1990s.  Since then, its growth has been stellar – or has it?

Our new white paper looks back at the history of cloud computing, to identify when it began to take shape at an enterprise level.  It then takes a look at the hype surrounding the cloud in recent years, and moves on to a clear look at what cloud computing can actually deliver.  We conclude with guidance for CIOs and their teams on how to negotiate the current cloud debate to their best advantage.

Fashion dictates that ‘cloud is the new black’ for the networked IT services industry.  The hype behind cloud – regardless of whether there is substance behind the claims – has, however, become so great that it has become a collective noun for infrastructure and software ‘as a service’ in a mix of public and private environments.

One of the most common mistakes in discussing ‘the cloud’ and its benefits and risks, however, is to think of it as only ‘the internet’.  There are in fact a range of ‘cloud’ environments that can be used by the enterprise.  The critical thing is deciding which type of application (and therefore business process) moves into which type of cloud.
Whether you believe the hype or not, five key trends will hasten the adoption of web-based applications and cloud computing.  These include consumer innovation setting the pace and the advent of power collaboration.  Changes in IT scalability have created new economics, and there’s a greater imperative for organisations to innovate.  Finally, the need to use less power is creating tremendous new challenges.

Virtualisation is a critical technology for supporting the cloud and dealing with all the trends above.  As virtualisation develops, it is anticipated that rather than just being used in limited clusters, these techniques will be applied across entire data centres, multiplying the economic and environmental benefits. Ultimately, data centre managers will have an at-a-glance understanding of all of the processing power available to them across an entire data centre.

As the marketplace becomes more sophisticated thanks to the exponential growth of cloud computing providers, the notion of entering ‘the cloud’ will become outdated, and the more appropriate questions will become ‘which services should I use?’, ‘who should I buy them from?’ and ‘can I get multiple services through a single broker?’  Savvy CIOs will know to ask these questions, and more.  This white paper will help them prepare the way.

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