How Virtual Can Your Private Cloud Be?

The advent of the game-changing cloud paradigm has only given virtualization an increased impetus. Virtualization provides the foundation for cloud computing, thus making it the building block of today’s agile infrastructure and an integral part of the CIO’s cloud strategy and roadmap.

Consider these numbers:

• 56% of 2,300 global respondents said server virtualization was the top priority for IT managers in 2011 (TechTarget 2011 IT Priorities Survey).
• 42% of respondents are considering or implementing a private cloud option, according to a survey of 525 data center owners and operators (Inaugural Uptime Institute Annual Data Center Industry Survey, May 2011).
• 89% of respondents of another survey say that private clouds are the logical step for organizations implementing virtualization (Harris Interactive Survey, October 2010).

However, the journey from virtualization to the cloud is a complex one and it is easy to get lost in the fog. As more enterprises deploy private clouds, the primary benefit they stand to gain is the maximization of investment in IT. At the same time, enterprises need to understand the issues involved in the progression from virtualization and the approach they must adopt to ensure a successful private cloud implementation.

Virtualization and the Private Cloud – How Deep Should We Go?

Virtualization is at the core of the private cloud. Several enterprises have already embarked on their cloud journey on the wings of virtualization. However, in transforming their IT and data centers, enterprises seem to be pushing more of their IT onto private clouds than public. This trend essentially driven by the value drawn out of IT investment maximization through the private cloud. Additionally, private cloud offer greater stability in terms of security, standards and integrated cloud environments. It is important to note that the private cloud could be the first step in an enterprise’s journey to cloud adoption. While virtualization abstracts the resource from the underlying physical hardware, thus allowing agility, the private cloud offers an automated framework to access and manage the virtualized resources. Many organizations have created virtualized data centers – virtual servers on their stacks.

As business needs grow and IT becomes complex, the enterprise requires a fool-proof IT governance framework to consume and manage its virtualized environment with agility, scale, automation, and flexibility. CIOs need to develop a comprehensive cloud strategy and roadmap leading up to a cloud ecosystem that serves their business objectives. The virtualization roadmap and the implementation of the private cloud must be dictated by this broader strategy. The enterprise must add management layers to the virtualized set-up to provide IT as a service. This allows the organization to access IT cost-effectively and efficiently through service-level agreements. This approach further enables the virtualized IT environment to dynamically respond to change with increased automation, thus providing high performance and scalability.

As virtualization becomes the foundation of a private cloud strategy, IT will be consumed differently and it will be run and governed differently. The private cloud dynamically changes the way IT is deployed, provisioned, consumed, and managed. In such an environment, CIOs discover that the private cloud offers greater security and they are able to exercise better control over their IT assets.

But How Do We Get to the Private Cloud?

For all the advantages of adopting the private cloud, CIOs are still challenged by the appropriate strategy to get there.

First, let us consider the challenges involved in an enterprise’s efforts to virtualize its IT environment. Most enterprises are saddled with heterogeneous legacy systems that are often incompatible with virtualization. While ideally enterprises ought to start with greenfield installations to allow near complete virtualization, typically, only 50-60% of systems can be virtualized in a large enterprise. This percentage can be improved as the enterprise retires legacy systems and continues on its virtualization journey. Further, for organizations that have scale can extend the private cloud and also reap the benefits of the public cloud by enabling extreme automation. In such cases, size works in their favor.

In this context, when an enterprise embarks on the virtualization roadmap, its baseline is the existing IT-set-up. In order to derive maximum value, the enterprise must take a top-down and bottoms-up approach. This offers a 360-degree view of the enterprise and allows visibility into how existing business needs to map to the physical infrastructure. An enterprise needs to have insight into its business drivers, evaluate infrastructural consolidation options, and realign its IT strategy accordingly.

As an enterprise builds a private cloud from its virtualized environment, it needs to address the following key aspects:

• Service orientation: This involves viewing and packaging the raw IT assets as a ‘service’ rather than as a standalone virtualized IT asset (as was done traditionally). Identifying the right granular services and service design is key.
• Automation: Automating the provisioning and configuration of the IT assets based on the dynamic needs of the users as per the pre-defined service level agreements.
• Service management as opposed to IT management: This involves maintaining, monitoring and management of configurations, and changes and interdependencies so as to ensure the service is delivered effectively and efficiently.

For today’s global enterprise, the focus of IT is on delivering business value. To enable this, the private cloud requires a new mindset in people, process and technology. Even as an enterprise undertakes the technological transformation, it must also learn to manage change at an organization level – architectural, governance, people, finance, and chargebacks.

The ability to design increased workload density and manage agility in a private cloud environment will depend on the ability of IT resources to do away with the traditional operational approach. Having a clear cloud vision, strategy and roadmap can help make the transition a smooth experience.