I have 20 minutes to spare before a session on open cloud begins so i thought i would post a thought around cloud and the network. One area that many businesses seem to overlook once they have looked at if the applications are suitable for cloud migration is, is my network suitable.
For many months now, we’ve talked about the Journey to Cloud Computing and how an evolution within your Data Center is needed to make that a reality.
As a partner to Cisco we are constantly asked what their stance is on cloud with reference to the network, and more recently the whole UCS and vblocks piece (but that is another blog).
Typical questions are:
What is Cisco’s perspective and strategy around the usage of multiple types of Cloud Computing (Private, Public, Hybrid, Community) and what is needed from the network to interconnect all these offerings?
How does my business manage the network transitions needed between today’s applications (often client-server), the virtualisation of those application, and next-generation web and big data applications?
What considerations do we need to make within my Data Centre as we try and maximise efficiency and scalability?
What considerations do we need to make at the edges of our networks when the proliferation of devices is almost out of control?
Are there ways to protect my network investments while still having the flexibility to deal with the business uncertainties that are around the next corner?
To help in those discussions, Cisco have put together a way to look at building Business-Ready Cloud Networks. By “Business-Ready”, we mean that your organisation can feel confident that it can run any mix of business applications within this framework and know that it can evolve as your business/application needs change over time.
The key points to take away from this are:
Cisco believes that IT services will be delivered (over time) through a variety of Cloud Computing services, both on-site and off-premise. The network requirements to deliver this in a secure, highly-available manner require a network that is robust, automated and capable of embedding network services to deal with any type of device or application.
The challenges in the Data Center and at the edges of the Borderless Network are unique, but they should be thought of in the context of architectures that deliver end-to-end service-levels to any user, any device or any application, regardless of where the IT service resides.
Data Center architectures must be able to evolve from today’s applications, through virtualisation and onto next-generation applications without the need to create entirely new architectures or silos with each step in the Journey.
Borderless architectures must allow maximum flexibility of devices and location, while delivering secure, robust user-experiences across all applications.
Want to see the slide deck from cisco, it's over here
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