critical questions to ask when selecting a cloud october 17, 2012...

“What Your Cloud Provider Won’t Tell You”

Critical questions to ask when selecting a cloud provider

Reed Smith

October 17, 2012

Savvis Proprietary & Confidential 2

Agenda

1. Introduction

2. Points to Remember

3. Use Cases

4. Savvis Cloud


Introductions

Who am I?

Reed Smith

Savvis, Director of Cloud Services

Who is Savvis?

• Global Cloud, Managed Hosting, Colocation and Network provider

• A division of Centurylink• Founded 1995• 48 global data centers – including Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver

• Hosting enterprise-class workloads in all industries– Financial, Consumer Brands, Government, Manufacturing,

Software and SaaS, Life Sciences, etc.


The Cloud Revolution

“Cloud computing isn’t revolutionary because it’s changing the mode of technology delivery. The real revolution that is underway is that it is opening up new lines of business in information technology or service delivery —even among non-IT businesses.”

“The biggest line item in [software startup] companies now is rent and food… A decade ago, I don’t think you could write a line of code for less than $1 million.” . . . This applies to departments of larger organizations as well, by the way. Designing new products, without the need to go through corporate finance and IT approvals definitely is a great way to instill entrepreneurial spirit.”

– Forbes, Cloud Computing May be a Shot in the Arm our Economy Needs, Bold added for emphasis


The Gartner Magic Quadrant for Managed Hosting

Leading Cloud Providers

Gartner, Inc., Magic Quadrant for Managed Hosting, Lydia Leong, Ted Chamberlin, March 5, 2012.

Gartner, Inc., Magic Quadrant for Public Cloud Infrastructure as a Service, Lydia Leong, Ted Chamberlin, December 8, 2011.

Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in our research publications, and does not advise technology users to select

only those vendors with the highest ratings. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner's research organization and should

not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any

warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. This Magic Quadrant graphic was published by Gartner, Inc. as part of a larger

research note and should be evaluated in the context of the entire report. The Gartner report is available upon request from Savvis.

The Gartner Magic Quadrant forPublic Cloud Infrastructure as a Service


Why are you here today?

What concept makes cloud appealing to you?

• Fast – get computing resources fast

• Cheap – only pay cents per hour

• Curious – about this cloud fad

• Next Big Thing – don’t want to miss the boat

• Corporate Mandate – Leadership telling you to look into cloud

• Flexibility – easily manage and reconfigure vServers and storage

• Endless Capacity – sick of running of capacity and long install times

• Other?


Cloud computing

– Usage-based billing

– Automatic delivery

– Minimal/no commitment

– Customer controlled service provisioning/modification/termination

Flexibility, low cost and instant scalability

A new way to consume data center services

Cloud computing is like online music vs. CDs

Not a new technology


What Type of Cloud?

SaaS“pay for seats”

PaaS“pay for transactions”

IaaS“pay for usage”

Utility“pay for resources”

• Hosted App or User Level Service

• Shared App Execution Environment

• Dedicated App Execution Environment

• Broad Infrastructure Abstraction

• Dynamic Sizing & Billing

• Management & Monitoring

• VM Service on Shared Infrastructure

• Fast Provisioning andGranular Billing

• Dedicated Blade in Shared Infrastructure

ManagedHosting

Dynamic Control

Lifecycle Control

Granular Sizing

Faster Provisioning

Shared Infrastructure

• Managed Servers

• Colocation


High Performing Clouds

• Highly reliable and available• Wide range of security features• Ease-of-use• Monthly and hourly billing• Full support available• Multiple service level options

Hybrid hosting and cloud solutions

Different service levels,

bursting, verticals

Different kinds of clouds

Mass Market Clouds• Developer image stacks and

tools• Minimal security features• Lower SLAs• Self-service/online support

Single service levels,

commodity platforms


Points to Remember

1. Add up all the costs (cheap means cheap)

2. Security matters

3. One size does not fit all

4. Do DIY right – avoid unseen pitfalls


Mobile Phone manufacturer wanted Cloud to enable test/dev workloads. Idle developers due to server downtime was expensive

• Deliver IT resources faster

• Grow Apps aligned with business demand

• Reliable cloud

• Billing varied with use

• Save money

Mobile Phone ManufacturerCase 1 – Add Up All The Costs


Use Case 1 – What They Found

• Some providers could build a cloud server fast, but difficult to build the environment around the server

• Read SLA’s – Had to buy double servers from some cloud prominent providers, due to no failover

• Some cloud providers could not reduce the size of a cloud server, once built or enlarged

• Many cloud providers will not pause billing

• Total cost adds up: bandwidth, scalable storage, IP addresses, OS license


Use Case 1 – What They Did

� Chose a provider with a resilient platform and high SLA’s

� Started small – grew and shrank cloud server size and count with business application demand

� “Parked” cloud servers when not in use, only paid for storage when parked

� Ran in the cloud, refined configurations and cost along the way


Financial Services SaaS provider needed secure cloud they could segregate for each customer while still saving money

• Deliver IT resources faster

• Flexibility to scale with demand

• Security and compliance imperative

• 24x7 monitoring and support

• Save money

Financial Services SaaS ProviderCase 2 – Security Matters



• Most dedicated cloud solutions required longer lead times

• Some providers term commit option has little flexibility – commit to a specific config for years

• Less traditional security, no enterprise firewall, hardened hypervisor, network separation, security infrastructure transparency

• Support was reactive or just reading from a script

• Saving money was difficult once all costs were added in



� Chose a securely separated multi-tenant option with fewer fixed costs and real-time initial build

� Pursued a spend-level term commit option, to save money

� Selected a cloud with clearly defined Cisco security components along with next-gen security features

� Demanded proactive monitoring and support

� Designed a global solution in North America, Asia and Europe


Cable TV content provider needed general test/dev environment and production environment for bursts based on online content promotions, experiencing cloud sprawl

• Lower cost test/dev environment

• Cloning and parking

• Reliability key for online content

• Burstability for online content marketing promotions

Cable TV Content ProviderCase 3 – One Size Does Not Fit All



• Low cost test/dev cloud becoming a commodity, performance and reliability vary, developers are not IT experts

• Many cloud providers will not park or pause billing

• Parking also nice option for burstability

• SLAs, platform stability and track records varying, reliability and consistency increased cost and complexity

• Support level must be homogenous with some cloud providers

• Term commits come with trade-offs



� Chose an affordable, easy-to-use intuitive interface for developers with cloning and parking

� Built a hybrid dedicated cloud for steady-state, public cloud for burst

� Deploying varying performance, SLA and support levels within the same cloud provider

� Spend-level term commit saves them 30% monthly


Systems integrator considering building cloud for internal use and sale to end customers

• Next gen server virtualization

• Cut out cloud provider middleman

• Take advantage of planned scale

• Save money

Systems IntegratorCase 4 – DIY, Avoid the Pitfalls



• Competing platforms of cloud technologies causes confusion and uncertainty of standards

• Cloud requires extensive expertise in infrastructure hosting, systems integration and GUI/API management

• In-house clouds lack SLAs and third-party support

• Purpose built in-house clouds can save money

• In-house clouds require Capex spend vs service provider Opex



� Chose dedicated hardware running within a public cloud framework

� Building global locations with private network connectivity

� Exploring building a cloud portal using cloud APIs

� Save money vs capital investment to build out global sites


Don’t Forget the Storage

� Look for flexible storage increments� Understand use cases for different classes of cloud storage:• Local storage• SAN/Network storage• Object stores• Archival storage• Snapshots• Backup

� Storage performance also depends on cloud server performance


Points to Remember

1. Add up all the costs (cheap means cheap)

2. Security matters

3. One size does not fit all

4. Do DIY right – avoid unseen pitfalls


Cloud Interface Example(Savvis VPDC)


Pulling It All Together

� Persistent cloud servers backed by an industry leading SLA

• Some mass market providers require buying 2 vServers in separate availability zones and more expensive storage to get an SLA and persistent images

�With a higher performing cloud your apps can do more with less, sometimes 3 or 4 times more

�Match your cloud performance and cost with application needs

• Some clouds give performance options from mass market cloud performance to enterprise-class cloud product performance

• Performance factors: storage ILM, network QoS, SLA, support, etc

• Mass Market clouds just force you to buy a bigger machine

� Some clouds bundle fundamental components eliminating nickel and diming

• Included: 95th percentile bandwidth, scalable storage amounts, IP Addresses, ACLs, OS SLA/support, etc


PRESENTATION RESOURCES

Gartner Case Study: Securing the Cloud

http://www.gartner.com/technology/reprints.do?id=1-1B4K5FR&ct=120628&st=sg

Vanson Bourne Executive Research Report

http://www.savvis.com/en-us/solutions/it-outsourcing/pages/vanson-bourne-whitepaper.aspx

CloudHarmony Performance Benchmark

http://www.savvis.com/en-us/infrastructure-services/enterprise-cloud/pages/cloudharmony-performance-benchmark.aspx

Presenter Contacts:

Reed Smith [email protected]

Florence Le Goff [email protected]

critical questions to ask when selecting a cloud october 17, 2012...

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