Public. Private. Hybrid. Count on BRUNS-PAK to Help Devise a Data Center Strategy to Seamlessly Integrate Your Cloud Computing Demands.
By any measure, cloud computing has come of age. Gartner projects cloud computing will constitute a $149 billion market by 2014, and IDC estimates 70% of work done on new servers in 2014 will be performed on virtual machines. (i) Companies run entirely in the cloud, companies use cloud resources to handle traffic spikes, and enterprises leverage cloud resources on an as-appropriate basis for select services.
What is cloud computing?
According to NIST, “Cloud computing is a model for enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction.” (Get the complete NIST definition document here.)
But a simple definition belies the subtle complexity of real-world cloud strategy. First of all, not all ‘clouds’ are created equal. Public clouds, private clouds (a corporate deployed private network) and hybrid clouds (a blend of public and private resources), are all operating today. Of course, for companies with decades of investment in IT resources and customized or proprietary applications and data workflows, going ‘full cloud’ is neither simple nor cheap. Large multinationals, banks and manufacturers often have thousands of applications running. In addition, concerns about data security, privacy and other legal considerations, make the decision to park data in web-accessible destinations complex.
And then the issue of reliability. One of cloud computing’s most visible providers, suffered an as-yet unexplained extended outage in April 2011, causing a number of high-profile customers extended downtime and untold headache, emphasizing that simply “deploying in the cloud” was not an instant cure for the traditional challenges of data center strategy.
The BRUNS-PAK Approach
At BRUNS-PAK we understand the drivers of cloud demand and the levers to success in cloud deployment, including:
- Server and application consolidation
- High-volume remote access
- Collaboration and sharing
- Rapid application prototyping and deployment
- User-generated content programs
- Virtualization
- Traffic shaping and load optimization
- Elastic storage
- On-demand server provisioning
- Mirroring and redundancy
Our engineering team understands that building an effective cloud computing program requires careful evaluation of demand, and clear focus on ensuring seamless integration of myriad resources, deployed across multiple locations, and all dynamically evolving as application strategies evolve, mobile devices alter the ways customers access applications, and data grows in importance as a strategic differentiator.
To learn more about BRUNS-PAK services for cloud computing, use our Contact Us page to reach out via the method most convenient for you.
(i) “The Cloud: Battle of the Tech Titans”. Bloomberg BusinessWeek Online.