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Is Your Network Ready for Cloud Computing? Here’s How to Find Out.

TS_Guest| August 29, 2011
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By Jose Cornejo

 

 

Much has been said and written about the Cloud, to the extent that considerable confusion has been sown among customers, vendors and providers.

 

Within the past few months, I’ve had opportunities to present several times at Interop and HP Discover. I often posed the following question to my audience: “How many of you understand or know what cloud is or means?”

 

Now, these were, of course, extremely tech-savvy audiences. Yet every time I asked this question, a large proportion of the hands in the room went up.

 

I wasn’t very surprised by this, though many in the audience were. The Cloud can be hard to pin down. I find that most of the customers that we work with at HP Network Consulting Services understand the benefits of adopting cloud network services. They want to know if they’re ready to leverage the Cloud to drive efficiencies and effectiveness across their networks by implementing a flexible and agile environment to run their business. But many don’t know where to start. 

 

That’s why HP now offers the Assessment for Cloud Ready Networking. This new service, announced today, provides a comprehensive but concise report that enables customers to gauge their ability to adopt cloud network computing services and to move towards a usage-based cost model.

 

Cloud is all about delivering more with less, reducing costs and increasing efficiencies by moving toward a highly leveraged delivery model. Cloud-driven networking is all part of the drive toward Converged Infrastructure, a crucial step on the path to the real-time responsiveness of the Instant-On Enterprise. It’s about achieving very high levels of maturity across the organization and in all of the ways that IT manages its people, processes, and technologies.

 

Imagine, just for a moment, that your organization has invested in achieving high levels of maturity within your technology vertical, yet you have not seen the benefits of Cloud. Chances are, that’s because your processes and people are not in alignment to take advantage of the technology. Automation and provisioning require a high degree of understanding and carefully designed processes in order to be managed correctly. Your people also have to be developed and trained to utilize these new tools and manage highly coupled procedures.

 

The Assessment for Cloud Ready Networking helps you see where the challenges lie. It also helps you answer the most pressing questions for network cloud adoption:

  • What type of cloud offering is best suited for the organization?
  • Will my applications benefit from an elastic and dynamically provisioned cloud network?
  • What are my compliance risks in moving towards a cloud-driven network?
  • Can the organization realize a positive ROI by moving towards a cloud ready network?

 

Wow, this may sound like a lot of complexity, but the good news is that we can help you reach you cloud goals. Just remember that you must reach a high maturity level across all aspects of your IT organization to reap the benefits that cloud brings. 

 

And the benefits are very real. Cloud enablement brings great opportunities for a business to better leverage its investments in technology. Plus, let’s not forget, it provides the IT organization’s people with the opportunity to take on a challenging initiative that will further develop their careers. 

As I always say: Enjoy the ride!

 

We’ll be talking up the Assessment for Cloud Ready Networking at VMWorld 2011 this week.

 

Read more about HP Network Consulting Services for the data center (1.27 MB, PDF).

 

Learn more about the Instant-On Enterprise.

Tags: Cloud| cloud computing| Discover| Interop| Network| View All (6)
Comments
Nadhan | ‎08-29-2011 05:33 PM
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Jose, you make a very good point that for enterprises to achieve the desired level of maturity aligned with their investments, it is important that the Transormation to the Cloud is addressed holistically as outlined in the Cloud Transformation Bill of Rights.  Doing so will maximize the benefits realized by leveraging the Cloud to drive efficiencies across the enterprise network.

 

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