Hybrid Solutions, Business Policy Both Important Areas for Enterprises Involved with Cloud Computing

By Ed Silverstein, TMCnet Contributor

(Editor’s Note: This article refers to a video interview shot at Cloud Expo 2010 in Santa Clara, California. To view the entire library of videos from other industry shows, Road Shows and product demos and interviews in our in-house studio, visit TMCnet Videos home page.)

With all the cloud computing options that are out there, enterprises need to make some choices. A new study by Forrester Consulting, that was commissioned by Abiquo (News - Alert), a provider of enterprise cloud management software, looked at some of the considerations for the cloud.

In a recent interview, Abiquo CEO, Pete Malcom, told TMCnet’s Erin Harrison that one trend indicated by the study is that a number of enterprises are going with a hybrid cloud versus a public cloud solution. 

Of those enterprises responding, 45 percent showed a preference for private clouds, with 21 percent showing a preference for hybrid clouds.

“There’s quote a resistance to moving to the public cloud because you only see one side of the picture,” Malcolm explained while at Cloud Expo 2010 in the Santa Clara Convention Center. “You only see the virtual side. You have no visibility, and certainly no control over the physical side. That’s what people are really afraid of, they just don’t know where their stuff is, where it is residing, what else is residing there, who has access to it.”

In a hybrid model, they have their own private cloud on premise and there is expansion out to a hosting provider who is adding extra resources.

A second trend coming from the study is about some other important considerations when going to the cloud, with business policy being among the most crucial.

“You really need to consider governance and security and compliance when you are rolling out a cloud solution,” Malcolm said. The study showed the enterprises which realized that, were the ones who already started to make cloud deployments.

The Forrester (News - Alert) study also indicates that automation is a key enabler of cloud computing and that a lack of smart, business policy-driven automation may inhibit success with cloud computing, the company said.

Malcolm added there are also issues related to virtual enterprises, and the benefits that come for the application groups. “The virtual enterprise is about empowering those people to deliver their own stuff, to provision their own stuff, in a way that’s risk-free for the rest of the enterprise,” Malcolm said. “The virtual enterprise is given a huge amount of ability to configure the servers, and the storage and the networking, exactly the way they want it, just as if they had their own physical data center but without the need to maintain all that hardware.”

Looking ahead, Malcolm is confident about the future for his company.

In the last few months, Abiquo has seen a change from companies doing “proof of concept” kind of work to companies actually making deployments. They are seeing traction among both hosting providers as well as enterprises, Malcolm said.

“They’re not converting their entire data centers yet, but they’re going to beyond testing the water and started to move into the rollout phase, and that’s pretty exciting for us,” Malcolm said.

To see the entire interview, please click the link below.

(source: http://it.tmcnet.com/topics/it/articles/123265-hybrid-solutions-business-policy-both-important-areas-enterprises.htm)