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Introducing vCloud Hybrid Service

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By: Bill Fathers, GM, Hybrid Cloud Services

A public cloud without compromise. Today it becomes reality. We are excited to unveil vCloud Hybrid Service, an infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) cloud built and operated by VMware that will enable our customers to achieve the benefits of the public cloud with the applications, skills and management tools they already trust. Built on the foundation of VMware vSphere® and leveraging VMware’s software-defined data center technologies, vCloud Hybrid Service will  provide an easy, fast path for VMware customers to achieve the agility and efficiency of the public cloud.

As we talk to customers, we consistently hear that they want the benefits of a public cloud environment, but can’t afford the risk, cost and time of starting over. They want a credible option that is built on trusted, enterprise-grade technology that can be easily deployed. They also want a partner who can give them a platform that delivers the agility expected by the business and the security and reliability IT demands.

We know there are many cloud offerings to choose from, but only vCloud Hybrid Service is built on the same platform that VMware customers use in their own data centers. Those customers have expressed a desire for a cloud offering that is completely compatible with what they are deploying internally and is built on the trusted, reliable foundation they have come to expect from VMware. And vCloud Hybrid Service was designed to support all of their existing applications as well as the development of any new ones – without requiring any change.

There is tremendous opportunity ahead in public cloud services, and VMware is doubling down on its strategy to accelerate the adoption of public cloud. Since 2008, we’ve believed in a model for IT that spans multiple data centers, leveraging a multi-cloud – or hybrid – architecture. As a result, we believe VMware technology has enabled more private and public clouds than any other technology platform. Today there are more than 200 vCloud-certified clouds globally, and VMware will continue to work with our service provider community to make our multi-cloud vision a reality.

The vCloud Hybrid Service is a natural extension of this approach, making the benefits of the software-defined data center available to our customers – and our partners – as a service. We plan to make the vCloud Hybrid Service technology and IP available to our service provider partners, and we believe our experience operating a cloud service will allow us to more rapidly deliver innovations to them in the coming months and years.

The industry understands the benefits of cloud, and the opportunity ahead is for VMware and our partners to help our customers get these benefits as quickly as possible.  We believe that the vCloud Hybrid Service is the fastest way for VMware customers to get to the cloud.  We call this an “inside-out” approach, where the cloud becomes a seamless extension of the data center. This is the cloud without compromise.

For future updates, follow @vCloud and @VMwareSP on Twitter.

Webinar: Learn How Cloud Makes DR Easy, Affordable, Reliable

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This is a guest post from vCloud Service Provider, Bluelock.

If you’re evaluating disaster recovery (DR) options you’re likely looking several options including traditional warm or cold-site solutions, cloud-based Recovery-as-a-Service (RaaS) DR and maybe even the age-old choice of simply crossing your fingers and hoping for the best.

When you’re classifying DR options, think of RaaS as the solution that protects your entire application, not just your virtual machine (VM) or the data within that VM. Cloud-based RaaS leverages consistency groups for application protection; meaning your entire application is recovered as a whole. The data is all recovered at the exact same point in time, so there’s less work needed from your team to stand your application back up after a declaration.

Even though cloud is in the name, the solution isn’t just for workloads currently hosted in the cloud. In fact, cloud-based RaaS can be used as a recovery solution for any VMware-virtualized workload, including those that live in your internal hosting environment.

If your company is new to cloud and wary of the learning curve, RaaS is the easiest on-ramp for new cloud customers.  It allows organizations to learn about cloud’s flexibility, automation and self-service capabilities while keeping the scope manageable for any size department. The primary workload remains in your company’s internal datacenter, while the application is replicated and protected in the cloud.

If you want to learn how RaaS just might be your perfect choice for reliability, affordability and ease of use, register to attend How to Implement a DR Strategy that Works: Recovery in the Cloud, a webinar on Wednesday, May 22nd from 2 – 3 p.m. EDT.

In this hour-long webinar, Bluelock’s Chief Technology Officer Pat O’Day will show you how Recovery-as-a-Service can turn your disaster recovery plan from a pipedream to a reality.  Crossing your fingers won’t even cross your mind after this session.

What you’ll walk away knowing:

Cloud makes DR easy and affordable.

Recovery-as-a-Service is a software-enabled recovery solution that is easy to install, has no agents and maintains a low barrier to entry. It’s easy and it works with any VMware-virtualized environment. With RaaS you’ll bulldoze any roadblocks that kept your team from implementing a DR solution in the past.

Cloud-based DR leaves you confident your entire application is protected.

Your data is important, but not as important as recovering your data in the context of the rest of your application. Cloud-based RaaS protects the entire application holistically and replicates at the hypervisor layer to ensure your workloads stand back up, ready to go immediately. Your team won’t have to put the puzzle pieces together after a declaration, because it will stand back up as a complete picture already.

RaaS prevents costly data and revenue loss with testable, reliable protection.

RaaS promises easy, affordable testing within its solution so you won’t have to take our word that your applications are protected; you’ll see it for yourself. In this webinar you will learn exactly how easy and affordable testing is by hearing the client success stories that will show first-hand how RaaS changes not only how the DR game works, but the way it’s played as well.

Delivering on the Promise of Hybrid Cloud

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By: Mathew Lodge

On March 13 at the EMC VMware Strategic Forum for Institutional Investors, Pat Gelsinger and Carl Eschenbach announced VMware would offer its own public cloud infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), what we’re calling the vCloud Hybrid Service. Since that time, we’ve had hundreds of conversations with our customers and partners, and you’ve made it even more clear there is a need for – and much enthusiasm about – a true hybrid cloud service. On May 21, we’ll launch that service, and you’re invited.

A common theme is the (healthy) tension between business teams striving to launch new products and services, move into new markets and generally drive growth, and overloaded IT organizations that are rewarded for avoiding outages and cutting costs – very different incentives. Public cloud has the potential to benefit both, helping to increase agility and also reduce cost (both real costs and opportunity cost). But today public cloud deployments are not the norm, or even widespread inside the average company.  So why is that?

Part of the problem is that while public clouds can be simple to use for development, they also uncompromisingly assume you can make all your application and systems fit their way of working in production. For application teams, using public cloud can mean having to modify or re-write an application to become a fully redundant distributed system that can handle any disruption and still soldier on. Then there is the packaged software your business depends on that just doesn’t function that way. Multiply that by the number of applications a business uses, and it’s a bottleneck: you can’t make that journey overnight, and that limits the cloud velocity of a business. Over in IT, the desire is to be able to take a supporting role without abdicating important responsibilities around operating costs, uptime and security.

VMware believes a new approach is necessary, one that starts inside your data center and extends out to support all applications – both the new “born in the cloud” application and your existing systems. We believe the hybrid cloud should allow you to seamlessly extend your data center to the public cloud leveraging the same infrastructure, same network, same management and skills.

By extending the very same platform (and operations model) that you use today in your data centers to the public cloud, you will be able to deploy and run all your applications onsite, offsite or both — without compromise and with less risk. This is true hybrid cloud.

Powered by the Software-Defined Data Center & the VMware Ecosystem

What makes this hybrid approach possible? Two things: the software-defined data center and VMware’s broad ecosystem of service providers, systems integrators, ISVs, and channel partners.

The software-defined data center – where compute, storage, network and security are all virtualized and automated by software – means customers can create a unified hybrid cloud architecture spanning data center and cloud with common processes and management. The software-defined data center is the “glue” that automates migration, management, and security.

If this sounds familiar, that’s because this vision for the hybrid cloud is not a new one. VMware and our ecosystem of partners have been advocating an “inside out” approach to cloud for years. With roughly 55,000 partners worldwide, chances are likely that your first experience with our technology was through one of our partners. And we plan to make it easy for you to get VMware’s software-defined data center in a new way – as a service – through the channels you’ve always used.

VMware is about to change the way you think about the cloud, and we hope you’ll join us on May 21 to learn more.

Be Confident in Your Data Center Security – Register for May 16 Webinar with Trend Micro!

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Data center security is often cited as a primary concern for organizations considering a move to a public, private or hybrid cloud environment. As a service provider, are you confident that your virtual environment is keeping your customers’ data secure?

Ease your fears next Thursday, May 16 at 11am PT as VMware partner Trend Micro discusses the advantages of their virtualization-aware Deep Security solution. Trend Micro is the industry leader in virtualization security, supporting compliance and providing adaptive protection for your customer’s virtualized and cloud deployments, in addition to their physical infrastructure. New multi-tenant architecture also enables service providers to offer customers a secure public cloud, isolated from other tenants.

During the webcast, hosted by VMware partner Ingram Micro, experts will share how Trend Micro Deep Security can:

  • Maximize operational cost reductions;
  • Prevent data breaches and business interruptions;
  • And achieve cost-effective compliance.

Service providers who attend will also receive an overview of sales and licensing details with solution positioning, and will be able to see a live demo of Trend Micro Deep Security in action.

Your customers trust you to keep their data secure – don’t miss this opportunity to learn how Trend Micro Deep Security can help you deliver better than traditional security to your customers. Register today!

Ingram Micro is promoting this product with a special offer of a $250 Ingram Micro credit memo when service providers purchase Deep Security before June 28.

For future updates, be sure to follow us on Twitter at @VMwareSP and @vCloud.

Bluelock Launches VMware vCloud® Recovery-as-a-Service Solutions

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This is a guest post from vCloud Service Provider, Bluelock.

Bluelock’s new Recovery-as-a-Service (RaaS) offerings deliver the benefits of VMware vCloud® with the latest recovery technology for a highly reliable, testable recovery solution. The new RaaS offerings are a unique type of Virtual Datacenter that enables organizations to recover critical IT resources with increased efficiencies and complete effectiveness when an adverse situation strikes.

Cloud-based RaaS is nothing like traditional disaster recovery (DR) solutions of the past.  Rather than needing to install agents across multiple devices, Bluelock’s solution requires no application modification to obtain recovery protection.

Based on Zerto Virtual Replication technology, Bluelock’s RaaS offering is fully compatible with VMware vSphere and VMware vCloud.  As one of Bluelock’s Virtual Datacenter solutions, RaaS allows for a holistic cloud experience and use of the Bluelock Portfolio tool to accurately predict and manage monthly cloud expenses.

Customers recover into a proven, enterprise-grade cloud environment that supports and runs production resources successfully and because testing is easy, affordable and effective, you’ll rest easy with the peace of mind that your recovery will work when you need it most.

Bluelock offers two types of RaaS solutions, a “To-Cloud” solution for customers who want to recover VMware-virtualized workloads hosted in their own facilities and an “In-Cloud” solution for current Bluelock cloud customers.

Bluelock’s To-Cloud RaaS solution offers businesses running VMware-virtualized environments the ability to recover data to a proven, enterprise-grade Bluelock Virtual Datacenter. Designed for ease-of-management, testing and verification, this innovative RaaS solution provides effective replication and recovery for production applications.

Bluelock’s In-Cloud RaaS solution is the ideal RaaS offering for Bluelock customers with critical workloads that require geographically-separated recovery environments. Bluelock has integrated a complete set of technologies and services that enables a testable and verified disaster recovery implementation. Using innovative replication technology, Bluelock’s solution provides effective replication of production applications to a second Bluelock datacenter.

“Achieving and optimizing the appropriate balance between IT disaster recovery capabilities, affordability and risk mitigation is central to Bluelock’s RaaS solutions,” said Pat O’Day, Chief Technology Officer at Bluelock. “Bluelock’s 4-Series Virtual Datacenters provide an affordable and effective product for both Bluelock customers and companies who want to recover into Bluelock’s proven enterprise-grade cloud environment at a compelling price point.”

Bluelock’s RaaS solutions are available immediately. To learn more about Bluelock’s RaaS offering, please visit: http://www.bluelock.com/.

Is Your Application Cloud-Ready?

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By: Chris Colotti

In the past few years that I have been blogging about VMware vCloud, we have always focused on the architecture “of the Cloud.”  Recently I have started talking more about how to “consume” the clouds we have finally built, either public or private.  The next evolution of this is understanding how we determine if our applications are actually cloud-ready.  There are a number of ways to look at this, but here are some of my perspectives on a few questions you can ask yourself.  The application really needs to be the center of the decision-making process.

#1 Do you know the application inter-dependencies?

More often than not this is the biggest problem to understand.  How many times have you upgraded an application, changed an IP address, or anything else for that matter and the help desk phone started ringing?  That’s generally because we simply do not know what things have become dependent on that application over time – not only external applications that have started using the one in question, but also the application interdependencies itself.  Things to consider in this area might be:

  • Is this a Multi-tier Application and do we know all the components?
  • Does it have Active Directory Requirements?
  • What external applications have started leveraging this application?

#2 What are the network dependencies?

In many cases you will need to change IP addresses of your application when you move it to the cloud.  This will become easier over time as Network Virtualization becomes more mainstream, we won’t have this problem as much.  However, how is your application connected to the network today?  You must not only know the application interdependencies, but the network ones as well.  A few things to consider here might be:

  • Does the application have firewall rules?
  • How are users accessing the application?
  • Does this application need to connect to other systems?

#3 How is the application administered?

Interestingly enough, this is a forgotten step when thinking about how to move the application to the cloud.  Today, if the application is on your standard infrastructure, you may be using one of three methods to administer the application in question.

  • Admin Web Interface
  • Secure Shell Access (Linux)
  • Terminal Server (Windows)

The thing to understand here is once that application is moved to the cloud, will these same means be directly accessible or will you need to “jump” to them? The answer will depend on how you decide to connect to your cloud, but certainly in some cases these interfaces may not be made “Publically” accessible so you need to think about how you are going to get to the system itself.

#4 Does the application require specific resources?

This is a very valid question to ask when looking at the current application   Recently, more people are starting to leverage the true power of VMware vSphere by using the resource options better and with more intelligence.  This may mean that you now have an application with per virtual machine settings to provide specific resources to it.  You need to determine if you can provide this same level of service in the cloud you have chosen.  Of course with some vCloud Director allocation models you can certainly do so.  Before you move the application, check for existing settings on the following in your local datacenter, and determine if you can provide the same.

  • CPU Reservations or Limits
  • Memory Reservations or Limits

You may need to figure out a way to translate some of these settings into the cloud either by getting multiple Virtual Datacenters with different capabilities, or by deciding if these settings are truly a requirement.

#5 What kind of storage is the application using?

Sometimes this may be a factor for performance, or capacity.  When you think about moving the application to the cloud, you need to absolutely consider the current storage requirements of the application.  There are a few factors to consider specific to this that you may want to think about including:

  • Current Storage Capacity and Utilization of the application?
  • Storage performance requirements of the application?
  • Are there multiple virtual disks?

You could have the option of creating storage tiers in your cloud to support each of these requirements, but before you move the application it’s good to identify these areas to avoid potential problems.

Is Your Application Cloud-Ready?

You need to ultimately decide the answer to this question, but it’s not something you can do without at least asking the five questions above.  Make sure you do some investigation with tools or on your own to get the answers to these questions.  Then and only then can you decide if your application is cloud-ready.  Once you do that, go ahead and start planning your move to your new Virtual Datacenter and begin leveraging the power of the Cloud.

For future updates, be sure to follow @vCloud and @VMwareSP on Twitter.

Chris is a Consulting Architect with the VMware vCloud Delivery Services team with over 10 years of experience working with IT hardware and software solutions. He holds a Bachelor of Science Degree in Information Systems from the Daniel Webster College. Prior to VMware he served a Fortune 1000 company in southern NH as a Systems Architect/Administrator, architecting VMware solutions to support new application deployments. At VMware, in the roles of a Consultant and now Consulting Architect, Chris has guided partners as well as customers in establishing a VMware practice and consulted on multiple customer projects ranging from datacenter migrations to long-term residency architecture support. Currently, Chris is working on the newest VMware vCloud solutions and architectures for enterprise-wide private cloud deployments.

Join Us For a Live Webcast – Pat Gelsinger, CEO, and Bill Fathers, GM, Hybrid Cloud Services, to Unveil vCloud Hybrid Service on May 21

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May 21st learn how to go #VMwareHybrid

Earlier this year, VMware announced plans to extend the software-defined datacenter with a hybrid cloud service offering that would allow its 500,000 customers to reap the full benefits of the public cloud.

On May 21st, Pat Gelsinger, CEO will join Bill Fathers, GM Hybrid Cloud Services, to unveil the vCloud Hybrid Service. The live webcast will provide details on how this new cloud service will seamlessly extend your data center to the cloud.

Pat Gelsinger, CEO

Bill Fathers, GM, Hybrid Cloud Services

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Register now for this free, LIVE online event: http://www.vmware.com/go/vmwarehybrid

For more information follow the VMware vCloud blog, and follow the hashtag #VMwareHybrid leading up to and during the webcast.

Share and Win!*

Help us spread the word by sharing this event and using the #VMwareHybrid hashtag on your social media channels, and you could win a prize! We will be randomly selecting winners every week to receive a Starbucks gift card or a Netflix gift subscription – the more you share, the better your chances of winning. Get ready to go #VMwareHybrid.

Stay up to date by following us on Twitter at @vCloud, @VMwareNews and @VMwareSP for future updates!

*Click below for contest terms and conditions.

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Delivering IT as a Service with a Software-Defined Data Center, Part 3: Putting ITaaS To Work

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In Parts 1 and 2 of this blog series, we discussed the definition of IT as a Service (ITaaS) and highlighted several important trends your company should follow in order to successfully deliver ITaaS.

In Part 3 of this series, we will be covering how to put ITaaS to work in your organization.

As you can see in the chart above, delivering ITaaS is a top priority for many organizations. So what can you do to successfully deliver ITaaS in your company? Here are three primary lessons:

  • Your enterprise objectives must drive the ITaaS strategy and guide the transformation process.
  • Your plan must be created for your enterprise with steps to accommodate organizational change and areas to engage and collaborate  across different IT user groups.
  • Your enterprise must empower and enable your IT teams to reinvent themselves as a nimble innovative service provider, rather than a general cost-centric technology group.

Whether ITaaS encompasses new or longstanding IT initiatives and resources, there are several key organizational shifts and strategic decisions that are necessary to obtain the positive impacts your enterprise desires:

  • Changing the conventional IT mindset that revolves around managing infrastructure to viewing it as an agile service delivery model for ITaaS;
  • Gaining senior-level executive support and leadership;
  • Aligning roles, organizational structure and KPIs with a service-oriented delivery organization;
  • Adopting the tools and mechanisms to use ITaaS and the underlying infrastructure that enables it;
  • And building a governance framework that supports and fosters ITaaS.

Best Practices To Successfully Implement ITaaS

Internal Steps:

  • Conduct an internal assessment and alignment to business priorities.
  • Establish, socialize and plan the ITaaS strategy, based on these business priorities.
  • Review, build and refine processes and timelines.
  • Review and address project ownership and governance, as well as the evolution of people skills and knowledge.
  • Tackle technology and product issues.

External Steps:

  • Reach out for assistance from peers or partners that are experts and have undergone an ITaaS transformation. Besides industry colleagues, these may include meeting with VMware’s Accelerate Advisory Services and joining Peer Groups, including VMware’s CXO Corner.

Making the leap to an ITaaS can be tremendously beneficial to enterprises. Yet it is not as easy as changing a server vendor.

Achieving success requires a clear strategy and ongoing attention to strategic, as well as tactical elements of information technology. Gaining executive support is critical – IT must take a leadership position and obtain executive support for any ITaaS initiative and ensure that staff is attuned to the ITaaS model within an SDDC.

Download the whitepaper to learn more, and follow us on Twitter at @vCloud and @VMwareSP for future updates!

VMware Provides Blueprint for Cloud Provider Success

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This is a guest post by vCloud Service Provider, Logicalis. 

By: Eric Brooks

If you’re searching for a public cloud provider for infrastructure services, you won’t have to look far; there is nothing short of a plethora of options when it comes to public cloud providers for infrastructure services.  The question is, which one should you choose and why?

Many infrastructure as a service (IaaS) providers have chosen to pursue open source or free solutions and customize them to fit their own models. On the surface, this might seem like the best route. It gives the provider a simple, easy and free solution on which to build their hosted cloud offering. There are no contracts to negotiate and no additional costs to consider.  And since, in a commoditized market, it is often a race to the bottom line, the use of a free hypervisor helps to reduce the base cost of infrastructure components – an attractive option.  But as is often the case, the less expensive route isn’t always the best.

Providers choosing open source or community supported hypervisor solutions quickly find that providing SLAs for availability without enterprise-class support is a bigger challenge than they had anticipated. Innovation is left to the speed of the community and release cycles can be unreliable. Also, the lack of advanced toolsets for monitoring and management requires the provider to build their own custom tools, greatly reducing the time-to-market for new services. These free solution side make providing infrastructure and hosting services in shared multi-tenant environments very difficult for the provider – and frustrating for the customer – to say the least.

VMware has been leading the Intel/AMD virtualization market for over a decade, making it an important partner for an IaaS provider like Logicalis to turn to when building a public cloud service.  VMware’s vSphere platform is not just a hypervisor. It provides an advanced toolset for management through vCenter, an unparalleled monitoring suite in vCenter Operations, and easy end-user provisioning through vCloud Director. It also offers out-of-the-box capabilities for high availability and disaster recovery. The vSphere platform is purpose built for multi-tenancy use cases. These features – in addition to enterprise-class support for all products, industry best performance, and leading-edge innovation in the virtualization space –  mean fast times to market for new services and very tight SLAs for availability.

Logicalis has been able to build a cost-competitive, enterprise-class IaaS offering for both existing and new customers thanks to our tight partnership with VMware’s service provider group which has a service provider licensing model that is well aligned with the consumption model of all its providers. It enables Logicalis to grow its VMware presence as customers continue to see the benefits of moving to the cloud, ultimately giving the end user a better IaaS experience as well.

Want to Know More?

Eric Brooks is a cloud solution architect for Logicalis US, an international IT solutions and managed services provider.

Delivering IT as a Service with a Software-Defined Data Center, Part 2: 4 IT Trends To Watch

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In Part 1 of this blog series, we discussed what IT as a Service (ITaaS) is and why it’s important for your company to thrive. In Part 2 of this series, we’ll take a look into IDG’s 2012 survey and the four key IT trends your company should follow in order to successfully deliver ITaaS.

Trend 1: Changing Mindset, Roles and Organizational Structure is Paramount

Success with ITaaS requires IT to take a strategic outlook and break down IT silos. To stay competitive in the market, IT must overcome internal barriers and cope with growing competition from established service providers that offer a proven value proposition for outsourced cloud, IaaS and software as a service (SaaS) models.

One vice president of IT for a $2 billion firm summarizes the new IT era as, “It’s not about support, it’s not just about providing capabilities, it’s about truly providing services in the context of leadership and achieving equal footing with other departments such as marketing, sales, HR and finance.” He later adds, “This dynamic means you can’t have merely good performance. You’ve got to have great performance that is sustained all the time.”

Similar challenges are being reported from other CIOs, CTOs and VPs, as needs for a more flexible IT framework that can adapt to a rapidly changing 24/7 business environment increase. According to another vice president and CTO of a $500 million firm, ITaaS can serve as a way to reduce risk and trim costs through a build-versus-buy approach.

Trend 2: It is Vital to Attain Executive Support

Over 64% of survey respondents acknowledged a need to acquire executive endorsements of ITaaS business objectives. However, educating senior executives and middle level managers about the benefits of ITaaS can be challenging. One CIO in particular noted, “You have to take every opportunity to discuss technology decisions as well as the pros and cons of a decision. You need to talk about why an approach such as ITaaS may align better or worse with a longer term strategy for the business.”

It’s common to encounter “pockets of resistance” from “conservative” and highly change-averse IT staff. Therefore, it’s important to get your staff “attuned” to the ITaaS model, so that they understand the reasoning behind the realignment of resources to support the change.

Trend 3: Organizations must Refactor ITIL and ITSM Practices

56% of the survey respondents in IDG’s survey said “Refactoring Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) and IT Service Management (ITSM) practices, procedures, and metrics across all domains… to accelerate the adoption of ITaaS” is a high priority. At the core of this concept is a need for clearly defined standards and a clear vision of technology and ITSM lifecycles, which can be done by assessing core architecture capabilities and then expanding the process.

One senior operations manager at a $3 billion consumer packaged goods firm explained that their organization has worked to define core architecture capabilities, and shared, “we have created a huge metrics-driven scorecard focused on resource allocation and innovation, solution delivery, the percentage of the roadmap that is completed, service level agreements (SLAs), scheduled up time, support staff satisfaction levels, percent of run budget as a percentage of revenue, and more.”

Trend 4: Organizations Must Redefine Their Core Architecture to Accelerate ITaaS

2/3rds of IDG’s survey respondents cited the importance of “defining core architecture capabilities for service delivery with consistent standards.” It’s next to impossible to embark on an ITaaS strategy without a Software Defined Datacenter that enables IT departments to organize consistent governance and standardized systems. Surveying and assessing all dimensions of an IT infrastructure and workload portfolio is necessary in order to identify the right mix of internally delivered services and broker with external service providers.

One VP of IT for a $2 billion firm noted that agility is not about accommodating every technology that comes along. “What it means is that you have to select the things that will become part of your core architecture…and you have to try to do that in a way that does not completely box you in for the next 20 years.”

Stay tuned for Part 3 of this series, where we’ll share tips on how you can put ITaaS to work in your organization. Download the whitepaper to learn more, and be sure to follow us on Twitter at @vCloud and @VMwareSP for future updates!