Analyst POV

Expert panel discussion on “Digitizing the Energy World” at AWS Summit 2016 in Berlin together with Werner Vogels (CTO, Amazon), Jan-Hendrik Sewing (President Lifecycle Services, Siemens) and Martin Goetz (CEO, RWE IT CZ).

In the coming years the Public Cloud will inevitably continue to take hold. From a technical point of view, the use of dynamic infrastructure is the only means to respond to ever changing market situations and to address them in a proactive fashion.

The black box Public Cloud makes it harder for IT organizations to keep sight of the big picture and to live up to their supervisory obligations. This becomes evident mainly through the lack of close ties to the actual IT operations of the cloud infrastructure.

The use of Public Cloud infrastructure is based on the shared responsibility model in which the responsibilities are clearly separated between the provider (physical environment) and his clients (logical environment).

In addition to the full responsibility for the logical environment, the customer does not only need to find an answer to the question of how to handle the black box – the physical environment – but also how to measure the services of the cloud provider at this level in order to maintain control.

With ITIL, CIOs have a powerful framework at their disposal which enables them to monitor the public cloud provider at all levels. Through established ITIL procedures, they can provide the business side with the facts that are required for reporting.

The strategy paper can be downloaded free of charge under “Service Management in the Public Cloud – Sourcing within the Digital Transformation“.

The maturing public cloud infrastructure gains increasing importance as an attractive alternative to on-premise enterprise IT infrastructure. Public cloud infrastructure offer an abundance of possibilities to CIOs when it comes to operating existing infrastructure and application environments more flexibly and at a lower cost. However, the existing public cloud storage services have been developed with a focus on the new generation of applications. This is why they are less well prepared to run existing enterprise applications. At present, the requisite storage concepts, standards and technologies for use of legacy enterprise applications on public cloud infrastructure are still not available. In order to ensure the continued existence as well as the proper operations of conventional application architectures on public cloud infrastructures, it is necessary to transfer the established and widespread standards into the public cloud. As legacy applications still constitute the lion‘s share of potential cloud migration candidates for new types of cloud native applications, well-known storage concepts are required to ensure the migration of existing applications without modifications to a public cloud infrastructure, where they continue to be operated.

In the strategy paper “Cloud Data Fabric”, Crisp Research analyses and explains the different enterprise storage options in the cloud and illustrates how to establish storage management with public cloud infrastructure.

The strategy paper can be downloaded free of charge under “Cloud Data Fabric – Enterprise Storage Services in the Cloud“.

As a result of growing digitization of business models and processes, CIOs and IT decision-makers are compelled to seek new sourcing models and infrastructure concepts. The Public Cloud plays a major role in this context. In the digital age, the significance of data management takes on a new dimension. Data have certain inertia and, hence need to be assigned to different classes so that they comply with regulations, legal requirements, technical limitations and individual safety classes. This so-called „Data Gravity“ impacts the mobility of data. New storage concepts are needed to process these hard-to-move data out-side of one‘s own IT infrastructure without loss of control. Hybrid and multi-cloud storage architectures provide implementation strategies and robust usage scenarios that are aligned with the new requirements. Within these architecture concepts, the data are located in a company-controlled area and the data owner is the only person who determines which parts are to be stored in the public cloud. Accordingly, all benefits of public cloud infrastructures can be utilized without losing control of one‘s data, while fulfilling the necessary compliance guidelines and legal requirements.

In the strategy paper “How to resist Data Gravity”, Crisp Research analyses and explains the connection between “data gravity” and the public cloud and illustrates new ways to reduce the impact.

The strategy paper can be downloaded free of charge under “How to resist Data Gravity“.

Within the framework of the digital agenda, IT infrastructure is of central importance. More than two thirds (68 percent) of companies regard digital infrastructure as the most important building block and the key to the successful digitization of their business models and processes. The Public Cloud is one of the most important vehicles of the digital evolution. Only by means of dynamically acting and globally scalable infrastructure are companies able to adapt their IT strategies to continuously changing market situations. Hence, they can strongly support the technical aspects of their company strategy. With a Digital Infrastructure Fabric, companies are mapping the technological image of their “Digital Enterprise“, defining all necessary players and drivers within their digital evolution.

Public Cloud infrastructure services represent a solid base, to support the digitization strategies of companies regardless of their size, predominantly however, companies with very scalable IT workloads. For example, startups are allowed to grow slowly without having to invest massively in IT resources from the very beginning. In this way, companies get a hold on one of the most important features, to have a say in the digital evolution: speed. Today for IT departments, there is more at stake than just preserving the status quo. IT must position itself as a strategic partner and business enabler and be capable of satisfying the individual needs of specialized departments. They need to pursue the goal of creating a competitive edge for the company on the basis of digital technologies. In this context, public cloud infrastructure support the proactive measures of the IT departments.

The strategy paper can be downloaded free of charge under “Public Cloud – The Key to a Successful Digital Transformation“.

In the end of 2014 Dr. Michael Missbach got in touch with me telling me about his plans to update his book “SAP on the Cloud“. The book gives a general overview of SAPs strategy and products around cloud computing and also covers (internal) cloud projects and ideas by SAP. One of his interests was the SAP Monsoon project, which was established and propelled by Jens Fuchs. I am covering the project as part of my OpenStack and open source cloud research at Crisp.

… and that is how it came that I have contributed the “SAP Monsoon” chapter to the book “SAP on the Cloud”.

The book can be ordered under http://www.springer.com/br/book/9783642436048.

The market for system integrators and managed services providers is undergoing a substantial change. Only those who start their cloud transformation as early as possible will be able to survive on the market in the long run. The reason for this development is the changing purchase behavior of IT decision-makers. They are looking for more flexibility when it comes to the use of IT resources. So system integrators and managed service providers are faced with a fundamental change of their core business and need to upgrade the skill set of their employees as quickly as possible to the cloud-ready status. In this context public cloud infrastructures offer ideal conditions with regard to the price-performance ratio for running customer systems and applications in a managed services model. This way a faster response to changing customer requirements and to varying market situations is possible. System integrators and managed services providers can benefit from the high availability, the scalability and a high security standard of public cloud infrastructures. As a consequence they can free themselves from their capital-intensive business (shift from CAPEX model to the OPEX model) and thus design their pricing and marketing models more flexibly.

In the strategy paper “Generation Cloud – The Market for MSPs and System Integrators in Transition”, Crisp Research analyses the new role of MSPs and System Integrators in the age of the cloud.

The strategy paper can be downloaded free of charge under “Generation Cloud – The Market for MSPs and System Integrators in Transition“.