by Rich Bourdeau
According to a recent 2013 Cloud Computing Study by the InfoPro, a services of 451 Research, 60% of the study’s respondents view cloud computing as a natural evolution of IT service delivery and 69% expect their spending to increase in both 2013 and 2014 compared with the prior year.
If you are like most of your peers you likely have come to the realization that you need to become quicker and more efficient at delivering infrastructure and applications to the business. Your customers are no longer going to wait days and weeks for services they can get from public cloud vendors in a matter of hours or minutes. Their costs may be higher, but as the saying goes: “time is money” and if they can get the resources they need quickly, then paying a premium often gets overlooked.
The question for most companies is no longer do I need to deploy a cloud management platform that automates the delivery of IT services. The question for most companies is what are my options and how do I get started. You have several options: you can build it yourself, buy a purpose built cloud management tool, or leverage a generic automation engine. Each option has its own challenges, benefits and risks. I have put together a series of short blog posts on selecting a cloud automation solution. In each post I have outlined some of the advantages and things you should watch out with each of these options.
- Part 1: The Build vs Buy Decision
- Part 2- The Limitations of Inflexible Tools
- Part 3 – Flexibility, But at What Cost?
- Part 4 – Balancing Function and Flexibility
- Part 5 – The Perfect Mix of Function and Flexibility
Gartner predicts that “By 2015, at least 20% of all cloud services will be consumed via internal or external cloud service brokerages, rather than directly, up from less than 5% today.” If your customers are not getting these services from you, then who will they be getting them from?
So don’t delay, and get started on your “IT as a Service” journey today. Learn more about VMware’s Cloud Automation solution.
- Watch the VMware IT Private Cloud – Exceeding Expectations video (2:28 min)
- Learn using the VCloud Automation 6.x Video Library
- Try HOL-SDC-1321 – vCloud Automation Center 6 from A to Z
- Check out what some of our customers are saying in the customer case studies on our web site.
Need help deploying your private cloud infrastructure or developing your business justification? Contact us and our experts can help your team build the business case and the solution that will maximize your IT productivity.
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