Cloud step by step or a single phase transition

Rising up into the Cloud continues to be the number 1 topic on the minds of CIO’s and IT departments. There are so many myths surrounding the “Cloud and how to decide that which path is best suited for a company”. Almost all companies now know that resisting the move towards the cloud is not in their best interest, in fact it is the path leading to cloud which act as a major barrier in their decision.

Rising to the Cloud: evaluating your options

One of the big questions is how to get there. I imagine lots of companies would like to get here sooner or later, and most sooner. Is it one big jump, or are there steps to get there?

Some feel that baby steps in virtualization are the only way to reach the cloud. There are lots of good reasons for businesses to turn to virtualization technology—more efficient utilization of existing computing resources and improved flexibility, to name just two. And virtualization is a powerful step in transforming IT. But it’s just that—a step. If you are confident you know where you want to go, why not take the fast track to the top? Climbing all those stair steps can be slow and tedious – and tiring. Might be easier to take the elevator, right?

How Cloud Computing benefits an organization

Real transformation comes when organizations fully embrace cloud computing. Building even a private cloud brings tremendous benefits such as reducing IT complexity, significantly lowering IT costs, and enabling a more flexible and agile service delivery. Not that virtualization and cloud computing are mutually exclusive; in fact, many technologists now believe a virtualized infrastructure is a strong catalyst for the next step, the adoption of cloud computing. But even the private cloud is so much more; it automates the underlying provisioning of infrastructure and applications and adds a convenient way for end users to request IT services.

Private cloud and automation & standardization myth

So why do businesses delay the adoption of a private cloud? Change can be difficult for any organization, but some executives may have concerns that the work needed to automate their environment might eclipse any gains made by automation. Or they may believe they need to further standardize their current environment to truly take advantage of automation. But the truth is that today, the effort needed to get the cloud is much, much less.

HP Cloud

Great strides have been made by such firms as HP to build the automation and integration tools needed for fast development of private clouds. True, if an organization has already adopted virtualization technology, that’s a major step toward internal cloud computing. But, in fact, it’s no longer necessary to take the stairs to the cloud by first adopting virtualization, then building on that technology, and finally moving tentatively to an embryonic cloud environment. Today you can take the elevator.

But is the elevator safe? I saw this sign in a hospital elevator:
In case of an emergency, don’t be alarmed. Please press the ALARM button.

Seems like a bad choice of wording if you ask me!

So how can you be comfortable pushing that elevator button to the Cloud? It would certainly help to have someone who’s done it successfully there with you, to guide you along the way. Someone to help you answer all those questions and concerns, and to package together the solution – an optimized set of products working perfectly together – that can help you make that jump.

HP CloudStart, a fast-track on-ramp to the cloud. CloudStart is a turnkey HP Services solution that allows you to deploy an open and flexible private cloud solution in 30 days. You get all the hardware, software, and services you need to launch HP CloudSystem, a complete, integrated private cloud that provides infrastructure as a service, as well as basic application deployment and monitoring.

For more information on the integrated private cloud solution and HP CloudSystem, please click here HP Cloud.