Part the Clouds: Learn the Basics

Cloud Computing 101: Simply put, Cloud computing increases business agility by offering access to a pool of computing resources (either on or off-premise) through the network. Resources can be easily turned on or off as needed, saving time, conserving costs, and decreasing time to market for organizations. End users benefit from on-demand self-service, improving connectivity and productivity.

Your organization would be interested in cloud if experiencing:

• LengthyTimetoProvisionResources. The time it takes to provision resources can have a direct affect on your organization’s bottom line. Slow time to market for applications reduces competitive advantage. Underprovisioning can slow time to market for applications (reducing competitiveness) and result in sluggish application response, (reducing end user productivity). Your IT staff is perceived as inefficient by the business.

• “PeaksandValleys”ofITCapacityNeeds. This is tied directly to the nature of an organization’s business activity (seasonal, one time, quarter/year-end, day/night, etc.). To ensure consistent and stable operations and to virtually eliminate risks, businesses built their computing platforms at or above the highest peak points of their IT requirements.

o Overprovisioning - many businesses today are stuck with over engineered computing platforms that are under utilized for the majority of the time, taking up real estate, depreciating in value, and consuming significant amounts of energy and resources.

o Underprovisioning - Organizations that under provision face the inability to complete projects as needed, loss of business/revenue, and dissatisfied management and end users.

- Budgets in many organizations have either been flat or declining

in the last few years. IT departments have delayed the purchase or refresh of servers and storage and may now be dealing with inadequate compute capacity.

- Data is growing at a rapid pace due to new devices, mobile users, growing number of applications, and social media. Overburdened hardware can lead to the inability to add new workloads, meet SLAs, downtime, and loss of business.

• Lackofinternalexpertiseorstaff. For many organizations allocating staff for strategic projects is a challenge, yet these are the initiatives that differentiate companies and drive revenue. Often there is not enough staff/time to maintain IT infrastructure, coordinate/manage integration of existing or new technologies, and to modernize applications.

Part the Clouds: Learn the Basics

While cloud is simply a long-term movement away from local processing to networks and web-based applications, it represents a critical point on that continuum. High level benefits include:

• HighlyElasticResourceswithOn-demandCapacity. Resources can be quickly and easily turned on or off (scaled up or down). o Improved business processes save time/money and decreases time to market. o New pricing models better align costs with usage. o Ability to “burst” or to temporarily increase compute capacity and then decrease as needed.

• ITProvidesImprovedServiceLevelso Automation provides IT with increased agility and control. o IT staff spends less time on routine maintenance and more time, talent, and energy on innovations to help the

organizations meet strategic goals.

• ImprovedServicetoEndUsers. Automation of provisioning and management enables on-demand self-service, improving connectivity and productivity.

o IT services are more closely aligned to the needs of the end user. Cloud computing drives automation.

Cloud Terms and Definitions

Cloud Service Deployment ModelsThere are three main models for cloud deployment: public,private,andhybrid. Public clouds are hosted in an independent data center that sells its services to a variety of customers. A private cloud can be either on-site or hosted off premises, but it is used only by the sponsoring organization. A hybrid model uses a public cloud for some functions and a private cloud for others. In determining which cloud deployment model is right for your organization, it is important to consider that each organization is different. Which ever model is used, the cloud should be:

• Designed for the specific needs of the enterprise. Not “one size fits all.”• Uniquely aligned to your enterprise’s business and approach to IT.• Able to leverage the investments of the existing IT infrastructure. • Delivered to meet the security/compliance needs of the data.

PublicClouds. Public or shared clouds typically provide services to multiple clients (multi tenant) over the internet while using access control, security, data integrity, and isolation mechanisms. Public clouds provide an elastic and cost effective means to deploy solutions. They offer capital and operational savings to end users, provided they manage their capacity well.

• Minimal capital requirements with no upfront risk/commitments.• Costs scale with usage.• Scale capacity up and down.

PrivateClouds. Private or dedicated clouds offer similar capabilities to public clouds, but they are used only by one customer. Customers may choose to self-manage their cloud and invest in the infrastructure to run it, including capital expenditures, such as servers, hardware and software, and the staff to manage the cloud. Security exposures are limited to those within the organization when it is an on-premise offering. One does not have to worry about issues of network bandwidth when accessed from within, and governance potentially provides for greater control, making compliance simpler. Over the last decade, the majority of IT spending was directed toward this type of infrastructure. Advantages of onsite private clouds include:

• No external dependencies on delivery of service levels.• Control of security and audit.• Data can remain onsite.• Requires scale for model viability.

Private Public

Hybrid

Part the Clouds: Learn the Basics

While control has significant value, moving to a hosted model provides financial incentives by shifting IT expenditures to the operating budget and out of the capital budget. It also increases an organization’s ability to quickly expand or contract their IT, because hosting services can add or subtract capacity as needed. In an on-site model, these quick variations are more difficult to achieve.

HybridCloud. Some organizations want to take advantage of the cost savings of public clouds, but need to keep some critical data and processes directly under their control. Often this is due to concerns about regulatory compliance of privacy of customer data. The organization can move less sensitive processes to a public cloud for cost savings and convenience, allowing it to maintain a smaller private cloud for critical processes. This model of public/private interoperability is termed a hybrid cloud. Hybrid clouds could also come into the picture when extra processing cycles are needed and the private cloud is at capacity. Offloading additional required capacity to a public cloud on demand incurs the same hybrid functionality.

Cloud Computing Service ModelsThere are 3 predominant models for delivering cloud services, but the variations on as-a-service are growing. These are primarily based on how the user consumes these services.

InfrastructureasaService(IaaS): The customer contracts for resources such as CPU, storage, and network, and deploys necessary operating systems and applications on top. The vendor charges based on CPU‘s used or storage consumed, or bandwidth used.

PlatformasaService(PaaS): The platform is an application development environment wherein a user, typically a developer, can develop and debug applications as well as deploy them. However, unlike traditional application development environments, the developer does not control the infrastructure, operating system, or network details. The developers just concern themselves with the application and the environment in which they are developed and deployed.

SoftwareasaService(SaaS): Software as a service provides an application for consumption without requiring any knowledge or control of the hardware, the network, or the operating system on which the application runs. The point of interaction is at the application level. Users access the application over a network, usually the Internet. The application and the data can be accessed from any point on the network/Internet using any supported device, and the most current version of the data is always available.

For more information about any of our service offerings, please contact your Dell representative or visit dell.com/services.

Dell and the Dell logo are trademarks of Dell Inc. Other trademarks and trade names may be used in this document to refer to either the entities claiming the marks and names or their products. Dell disclaims proprietary interest in the marks and names of others. © 2011 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. May 2011 | Cloud_LearnTheBasics_MiniWhitepaper.indd | Rev. 1.0 20110518HVAT

InfrastructureasaService(IaaS)

PlatformasaService(PaaS)

SoftwareasaService(SaaS)

• Customer does not manage hardware. Applications & services are independent of the infrastructure or people.

• Customers purchase infrastructure on pay-as-you-go open basis.

• Variable pricing and capacity (up and down). • Transition of IT from CAPEX to OPEX.

• Application platforms used to develop, test, and deploy applications over the internet.

• Pay-as-you-go, variable pricing, and capacity on demand.

• Software applications for CRM, HRM, e-mail, or other applications deployed in a hosted environment, licensed based on subscriptions.

Service Model Description Target Audience

Developers and System Administrators: • Server, storage, and networking• OS, virtualization, and file systems

Developers: • Development Tools• Database and middleware• Infrastructure software

End users:• Collaborative applications• ERM, CRM, supply chain applications• Operations, manufacturing, &

engineering applications