Good morning and thank you for attending today’s presentation on the Ten Myths of Cloud Computing. My name is __________ and it’s a pleasure being with you here today.
Cloud computing has come a long way toward becoming mainstream for IT within the enterprise. The truth is there are still plenty of misconceptions about what cloud computing is and what it can do.
For example, in a recent survey about cloud computing that was given to over 1,000 people here in the U.S., some of the results were rather shocking. <Go through the bullets>.
Some of these results are pretty humorous, but they illustrate that many people still have a very limited understanding about cloud. So it’s not a surprise that there are still quite a few lingering myths about cloud, even today. Seeing past these myths is critical to making the right decisions about whether, when, and how to adopt cloud-based solutions. Now let’s take a look at and dispel the list of top 10 cloud myths that exist today.
Among our customers, private cloud adoption is increasing significantly. No surprise.
In a survey we ran in August 2012, we found that 37% of customers already have a private cloud. One year prior in August 2010, 29% said they had a private cloud. This is a 28% increase.
Public cloud adoption increased from 14% to 26%, a 90% increase.
It’s clear that both private and public cloud adoption are increasing rapidly. Private cloud adoption is significantly higher than public cloud adoption, but the rate of increase is higher for public clouds. Our survey results are consistent with findings from various analyst firms.
This rapid adoption of private and public clouds is broad based across organizations of different sizes, industries and regions of the world.
Optional:
This is based a survey of customers conducted by the IOUG, the Independent Oracle Users’ Group. Because these are IOUG members, they are primarily Oracle customers. ss folks. The level of the respondent varies from IT admin to CIO/CTO.
Businesses are adopting cloud-based solutions in a million different ways. Getting to the cloud is an evolution and taking a methodical, multi-step approach that meets your business needs without overturning the apple cart is often the best approach. Moving from silo’d environments to consolidated or virtualized environments is a very common first step.
<click> Many evolve to private clouds by introducing self-service and auto-scaled environments or metering and chargeback.
<click> To some, specialized public clouds provide a rapid way to adopt the cloud, particularly LOBs looking to quickly deploy SaaS-based solutions that addresses particular business functions.
<click> Ultimately, businesses will move to “hybrid clouds” where a single application can span both private and public clouds and is managed in a federated manner.
It’s true that virtualization is a key technology that enables cloud computing, but virtualization alone does not make a cloud. Cloud is not just about server and workload consolidation with the goal of reducing infrastructure costs. To validate the point, consider the recent poll conducted by IOUG (Source: IOUG ResearchWire member studies on Cloud Computing, conducted in Aug-Sept 2010 and Aug-Sept 2012) which shows the rate of adoption of PaaS is noticeably greater than the rate of adoption of IaaS. Not a surprise considering the higher level of standardization and resource sharing, coupled with reduced heterogeneity, complexity, and cost that PaaS has to offer when compared to IaaS.
Reducing operational and capital costs are certainly good reasons for adopting cloud computing. For many organizations, the initial step in the evolution to cloud involves consolidation that drives significant cost savings. But these days, adopting cloud-based solutions is rarely just about saving money. Businesses are realizing that further evolution to a pre-defined service catalog, self-service provisioning and auto-scaling drives speed of deployment, business innovation, and agility/adaptability to changing business needs. Others view cloud as a way to gain flexibility and to reduce the risk of failed deployments. The biggest benefit of cloud may differ from one organization to the next and is usually directly tied to whatever issue(s) is driving them to adopt cloud in the first place.
Clouds run on servers that come in all different shapes and sizes. The common belief that clouds are best run on cheap, commodity hardware. However, you should think about what’s most important to you when either building a private cloud or consuming a public cloud. Do you want a custom integrated system built from best-of-breed components? Does an optimized solution with pre-designed configuration make more sense? Or do you need the extreme performance and efficiency of an engineered system? You may find that going with commodity isn’t always the best choice. Let’s take look at the reasons why that is.
OPTIONAL: You may also want to reference Oracle products (e.g. SPARC/x86 Servers, Optimized Solutions, Exadata/Exalogic) as being ideal for enterprise cloud infrastructure deployments.
The fear of being locked into a particular vendor’s cloud is not totally unjustified. The truth is that some public cloud service providers would like nothing better to have you become dependent upon their proprietary cloud technology. The good news is that you have many choices when it comes to the cloud and avoiding lock-in is not difficult if you know what characteristics to look for: open, industry-based standards, multiple application deployment options across public or private clouds, or on-premise, and seamless integration capabilities to easily move data in and out of the cloud.
Paying for the use of a pubic cloud on a per minute or hourly basis may sound economical, but the costs are variable and can add up very quickly. Pay-per-use makes a lot of sense for applications that have a short lifespan or have large fluctuations in capacity needs. Subscription-based pricing that offer fixed monthly or annual costs are often the better choice for applications that are long-lived and have relatively stable capacity requirements. Consider what’s most economical for your particular application and weigh your options before deciding the best approach.
Security has long been one of top concerns amongst organizations considering a move to public clouds. The fact is that businesses often improve application and data security by leveraging enterprise-grade public clouds. Many corporate data centers have limited security resources and expertise, challenges meeting regulatory requirements, outdated software and hardware, and don’t perform regular security audits and assessments. On the other hand, tight security is table stakes for any public cloud provider – many have a dedicated team of cloud security experts, ensure compliance regulatory and industry standards, perform regular-third party security audits, and automatically update their hardware and software. Still, not all cloud security is equal and the best advice is to review your cloud provider’s security technology and practices to understand any potential security risks.
There are enough SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS providers vying for your business to make your head spin. While it might seem like a good idea to select specialized clouds to address different critical business functions, consider the data silos and fragmented business processes that you’ll face when deploying multiple specialized clouds. You’ll have to deal with complex and costly integrations to build and maintain as well as multiple, inconsistent user experiences.
A recent survey of business managers (Independent market research conducted by Dynamic Markets in May 2013; Cloud for Business Managers: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly) reported staff downtime, missed business deadlines, and stunted innovation initiatives due to poor integration of cloud applications from multiple vendors. A complete, integrated enterprise cloud can eliminate the need for complex integrations and disjointed user experiences that result from using multiple specialized clouds.
To summarize what I’ve just discussed, broad knowledge of cloud computing has steadily grown and come a long way. Still, myths about cloud computing still abound and you should be careful not to buy into them when making decisions related to your use of cloud. It’s important to do your homework and understand all of your options and how each will impact your business. By making informed decisions, cloud computing can offer your business choice, value, and flexibility.