state of cloud 2016 - wgroup industry report
TRANSCRIPT
Drive Your Business
And what it means for IT leaders
Industry ReportState of Cloud
2 ©2016 WGroup. ThinkWGroup.com
by Bill Genovese, Tony Ioele, Doug Smith and David Spindel
State of CloudAnd what it means for IT leaders
Copyright © 2016 WGroup. All rights reserved.
3 ©2016 WGroup. ThinkWGroup.com
Cloud technology is core to delivery of services
in almost every industry, but its ongoing
evolution means your organization needs to
be flexible and agile enough to change with it.
New services and applications appear daily,
and cost structures are constantly changing.
This special WGroup industry report, “State of
Cloud,” will help you understand its rapid evolution
so you can refine your IT strategy and fully leverage
the power of today’s cloud in your organization.
Feel free to contact me personally to discuss at
610-854-2700 or [email protected].
Foreword
– Harry Wallaesa, WGroup CEO
4 ©2016 WGroup. ThinkWGroup.com
Table of ContentsIntroduction...............................................................................................................................................
Governance is a must, not an option........................................................................................................
The state of cloud.....................................................................................................................................
Cloud is diverse...........................................................................................................................
Cost structures are changing.......................................................................................................
The rise of data............................................................................................................................
Increased automation..................................................................................................................
Increased performance and security............................................................................................
Staying competitive......................................................................................................................
Challenges and opportunities....................................................................................................................
Cloud players................................................................................................................................
Detailed leading cloud vendor comparison...................................................................................
Cloud challenges CIOs face today.............................................................................................................
Evaluating your current state.....................................................................................................................
The big picture..............................................................................................................................
Performance.................................................................................................................................
Security and compliance..............................................................................................................
Vendors........................................................................................................................................
Making the move to cloud............................................................................................................
Applications..................................................................................................................................
Cost-effective cloud adoption....................................................................................................................
Evaluating your cloud implementation......................................................................................................
How WGroup can help.............................................................................................................................
About the authors ....................................................................................................................................
References...............................................................................................................................................
5
8
14
14
17
21
21
22
29
30
30
36
42
48
51
52
53
54
54
55
56
58
61
62
66
5 ©2016 WGroup. ThinkWGroup.com
Cloud technology has gained a permanent foothold in IT and continues to revolutionize businesses
and other organizations in increasingly significant ways. With the ability to provide greater scalability,
functionality, and in many cases cost-effectiveness, almost every organization is implementing cloud
deployments in some form. With SaaS, PaaS, IaaS, private cloud, hybrid cloud, and other public
cloud technologies, this new paradigm is bringing remarkable change to IT departments across all
industries. WGroup believes that cloud technology will become just as ubiquitous to all of us as the
Internet is. In order to harness the power of this environment, businesses must learn how to more
effectively secure and manage cloud, leveraging it to make their organization more responsive.
At any given moment, we can access information on the Internet via computers, phones,
tablets, and televisions. This trend will continue, and one day all of the enabling IT
infrastructure will be available like a utility to further offer access to information and
data through cloud computing and technology. The explosion of information and data is
increasing, along with new technology to capture and monitor more information.
So, how does a company harness this data through cloud technology?
Introduction
6 ©2016 WGroup. ThinkWGroup.com
It begins with the use of a well-defined strategy with specified business processes and aligned IT
services (via private, public and “hybrid” cloud deployment models). A mature enterprise architecture-
driven framework provides building blocks that can act as investment enablers for decisions on
how and where to begin to take advantage of cloud technology, for example, to gain faster access
to data. This strategy and framework is critical for cost avoidance, so that maximum accelerated
ROI is achieved, and duplication of investments is limited or prevented. In addition, a mature
enterprise architecture function provides the guardrails to mitigate risk as technologies converge.
An enterprise-technology framework defines the technology services and functions (IT capabilities)
required to support the business applications and data, including common (or shared) application
services, common data services, common system services, network services, security services,
and platform services, as well as the management tools used to support the delivery of IT service. It
also helps to define the specifics for a line of business that may be required as well, or in the case
of a software defined and enabled hybrid-cloud model, what system or application must stay in the
datacenter at the corporation. (For example, “system of record” vs. what may be hosted in a SaaS or
Public Model and also potentially accessed via a “system of engagement” via a mobile device, where
data and analysis output can be received). This reference framework can help to define what are private
or bounded service definitions, policies, and patterns; it also helps define the policies for a hybrid-
cloud delivery model and how best to access and secure structured and unstructured data outside the
organization. That data is being captured and delivered via technology sensors and devices across
entities, geographies, and even people (via wearable devices), as part the Internet of Things (IoT).
Our society is rapidly transforming with the explosion of data. To best harness it for its full advantage,
enterprise architecture provides a roadmap on where to best leverage existing assets for development
of services. A well-established enterprise-technology framework aligns with an enterprise-security
architecture framework to define the guardrails, based on regulatory and corporate policy.
WGroup can accelerate your cloud-value journey to enable faster business outcomes,
by guiding you and your team as you define a very specific IT strategy, based on your
business goals and objectives. We can also guide you through identifying the required
enablers and accelerators (leveraged as services) to identify the optimal entry points
for the converging technologies, as delivered through cloud technology.
7 ©2016 WGroup. ThinkWGroup.com
Cloud technology is evolving every day, and keeping up with the latest trends, standards,
security, and opportunities is not always straightforward. Although most businesses have
awoken to the benefits of cloud and started to implement it, many have not yet taken full
advantage of new technologies and deployed them in a strategic way. Managing contracts
with cloud vendors can be very complex as many organizations struggle to validate their
SLAs and keep track of multiple providers. Ensuring that a cloud deployment is securely and
reliably maintained can be equally challenging. In order to make sure that your organization
is taking full advantage of the power and flexibility
cloud can offer, it’s important to assess the current
state and maturity level of cloud technology
and its applicability in your organization. Is your
business already leveraging that power? Where
are future opportunities? How can cloud be used
to meet your business goals and challenges?
This paper will help you better understand
cloud, how it affects your organization,
how to take advantage of cloud
technology, and how to meet the challenges and opportunities it brings.
It’s important to assess the current state and maturity level of cloud technology and its applicability in your organization.
Is your business already leveraging that power?
Where are future opportunities?
How can cloud be used to meet your business goals and challenges?
Managing the changing cloud
8 ©2016 WGroup. ThinkWGroup.com
When moving to a cloud environment, whether you manage your own cloud environment or
use a cloud-service provider, there should be no difference between your IT management
of your existing SLAs and associated systems. If anything, you should expect more from
a cloud service provider, then what you may have already implemented in-house.
For example, imagine you have applied discipline to the management team of what was once a loose
process consisting of one meeting a year,
which usually resulted in priorities shifting
based on squeaky wheels. You now run
quarterly cross-functional meetings to
review requirements and are holding to
the priorities. In accordance with this, you
are establishing a project management
office (PMO). Your intent is to make the
PMO not overly burdensome. Is the
PMO standing on its own to help execute
the individual projects on a transaction-by-transaction basis or squeaky wheel basis? Is the portfolio
aligned to the business strategy? Who in the organization is ensuring the “right” technology
and architecture for what the business needs? A solid PMO is a good part of the puzzle and
needed for project (and larger program level) governance and execution, but without a mature
enterprise-architecture function in the organization, are they the right projects? Are they ensuring
the organization is making the right choices for technology to meet the business drivers and
requirements, while ensuring technical risk is mitigated and stability is maintained or improved?
As part of this scenario, imagine you have many large-scale infrastructure transformation
initiatives planned and some are in flight, so having a PMO to govern and manage them is
a good thing. You have a roadmap to transform your infrastructure with a “rolling thunder”
approach that will take at least three years and cost about $30 million. Your CFO and board are
already aware and support it (even though your board may not know what the core technology
is, and how it will solve the most pressing issues for the business and by when).
Governance is a must, not an option
9 ©2016 WGroup. ThinkWGroup.com
The strategic steps you have in mind include assessing the current state, developing
the future vision (leveraging cloud and new technologies), developing the roadmap
to achieve the vision, and executing. Today you are in the process of assessing your
infrastructure, as a starting point. In developing your future vision you have a number of
items that are known considerations, in-flight initiatives, and challenges you are facing
– your enterprise requirements. They include the following hypothetical activities:
• June 2016 is a milestone month. Your Enterprise Microsoft contract is up for renewal.
• You plan to upgrade to JDE EnterpriseOne (your options in this regard are limited).
• As has been planned, your JDEOne ERP implementation is likely to start.
• As you look at renewal options you are considering migrating to Microsoft Office 365,
to potentially reduce costs and administrative burden. This analysis should also start
to consider integration of other capabilities from Microsoft Sharepoint for collaboration,
Microsoft Dynamics as a potential alternative for JDEOne, and as you are growing your B2B
model and business you are possibly considering a CRM solution, which Dynamics provides
as well, vs. what you may have in house today.
• Another potential integrated solution to investigate is Microsoft Azure. You may be able to
further reduce application licensing and administrative burden, and reduce risks by going
with a hosted Microsoft cloud offering through Azure.
• Then, you start thinking. Today you are generally on-premise for about 50 enterprise
applications. Should this be moved to co-lo or cloud? A benefit of moving away from on-
premise will enable you to have resources focused on core activities. But what applications
and workloads should be moved and can be moved? What are the risks?
• Given the intended moves to MS and the JDE ERP installation you should be able to
consolidate applications that will reduce resource requirements.
• You are a VMware shop and are your IT staff is very comfortable with this. There is no issue
here or compelling reason to change this.
10 ©2016 WGroup. ThinkWGroup.com
• Then as you get further into the analysis, you realize that moving applications into cloud has
network implications that need to be considered. Have you planned for this?
• You also have apps that hold core systems of record in your datacenter on legacy systems (e.g.
AS400), that may not be the best candidates to re-platform (for interoperability reasons) or move
off-premise (due to data privacy issues).
• You’ve given a large portion of the responsibility for addressing and solving the above challenges to
your IT operations manager, while maintaining, running, and operating your existing daily demands
on IT.
• You have heard (rightly or wrongly) that cloud can be your saving grace to solve these challenges.
• Your expectations for taking advantage of cloud for the future minimally include lower HW
investment, lower staffing requirements, and more flexibility and scale.
11 ©2016 WGroup. ThinkWGroup.com
To further complicate the above, you may now also have existing applications or systems
that are undergoing or in need of overhaul because they are not yet ready to meet new
regulatory mandates. Your data may be at risk of exposure or not properly protected.
The above is a typical example of what all organizations are facing today. The challenges and
obstacles are oriented on people, process, and technology. Introducing what can be perceived
as disruptive technology can create additional obstructions for the business and your IT staff.
Before moving workloads to a vendor-hosted cloud, you need evidence
that the vendor is already meeting regulatory standards (e.g., HIPAA, PCI-
DSS, FedRAMP, FISMA) for organizations similar to yours.
As data proliferates, there is increasing improvement to standards that deal specifically with
governance and management of data and information security, including the identification of risks
and the implementation of security controls to address these risks. The ISO/IEC 27000-series is
the most widely recognized and applied set of standards relating to the security of ICT systems.
The core standards are 27001 and 27002, with 27001 containing the requirements related to
an information security management system,
and 27002 describing a series
of controls that address specific
aspects of the information-
security management system.
ISO 27001 is an advisory standard that is
meant to be interpreted and applied to all types and sizes of organizations, according to the
particular information security risks they face. In practice, this flexibility gives users a lot of
latitude to adopt the detailed information-security controls that make sense to them, but can
make compliance testing more complex than some other formal certification schemes.
ISO 27001 is an advisory standard that is meant to be interpreted and applied to all types and sizes of organizations, according to the particular information security risks they face.
12 ©2016 WGroup. ThinkWGroup.com
ISO 27002 is a collection of security controls (often referred to as best practices) that are used as a security standard.
ISO 27002 is a collection of security controls (often referred to as best practices) that are used
as a security standard. Assuming that the design and/or operation of a cloud service provider’s
information security management systems are
consistent with the standard (e.g., there are
no notable gaps) it can be asserted that their
environment is compliant with the standard.
The 27001 and 27002 standards apply generally
to the operation of ICT systems. ISO 27017 and ISO 27018 are two new standards under development
that describe the application of 27002 to cloud computing. ISO 27017 deals with the application
of the ISO 27002 specification to the use of cloud services and to the provision of cloud services.
ISO 27018 deals with the application of 27002 to the handling of personally identifiable information
(PII) in cloud computing, sometimes described as dealing with privacy in cloud computing.
At a minimum, cloud-service customers are advised to look for providers that conform to the ISO
27002 standard for information systems security. This is not necessarily specific to cloud computing,
but the principles can still be usefully applied to the provision of cloud services (i.e., as a measure
of maturity and as a necessary safeguard of doing “the right things” in an IT organization). A cloud-
service provider can assert on its own behalf as to its compliance with a standard, but having an
independent/qualified third-party certify compliance is a notably stronger form of attestation.
In addition, customers are advised to check whether their cloud-service provider
conforms to ISO 27017 and ISO 27018, standards, since they are specific to cloud
computing for information security and for the handling of PII, respectively.
WGroup is your preferred and chosen advisory partner to ensure that effective governance, risk,
and compliance processes exist. If they don’t, we’ll show you how to implement and deploy them.
However, this is just the first step. We are here to help you through the analysis of choices and
architectural decisions you will need to make, with critical input from your team. We’ll help you
adapt the leading and best practices implemented by those who have made this journey.
13 ©2016 WGroup. ThinkWGroup.com
WGroup’s vision and capabilities align with Cloud Standards Customer Council’s 10
steps to help your organization ensure success for secure cloud computing.
1. Ensure effective governance, risk, and compliance processes exist.
2. Audit operational and business processes.
3. Manage people, roles and identities.
4. Ensure proper protection of data and information.
5. Enforce privacy policies.
6. Assess the security provisions for cloud applications.
7. Ensure cloud networks and connections are secure.
8. Evaluate security controls on physical infrastructure and facilities.
9. Manage security terms in cloud SLA.
10. Understand the security requirements of the exit process.
Taking a holistic approach to your challenges and in-flight initiatives, WGroup develops a strategy
with you and your team. We meet your most pressing needs, but also align these to next steps in
meeting your business strategy. In the most cost-effective and safest approach possible, we bring
higher standards to your organization through service-provider capabilities and management.
14 ©2016 WGroup. ThinkWGroup.com
The state of cloudCloud is a diverse, rapidly changing model that can enable a range of services and applications
for business and other organizational users. It represents any system that gives end-
users access to computing resources, allowing organizations to more easily scale their
businesses, share information, and implement new functionality. Clearly cloud will be an
increasingly important fixture in organizations for the foreseeable future. That’s why it’s so
important that your business understands the current state of cloud, have robust governance
processes in place, and prepare for the changes that the shifting landscape will bring.
An ever-expanding array of cloud applications and services is available. SaaS, IaaS,
PaaS, private cloud, hybrid cloud, and other solutions each offer unique opportunities
and challenges for businesses. To determine which choices fit their needs, organizations
need to understand this wide range of options and their security considerations.
Cloud is diverse
15 ©2016 WGroup. ThinkWGroup.com
Multiplying XaaS options
Each organization has unique cloud needs, and public-cloud providers are offering a
growing range of options to meet them. Although many non-IT focused organizations
can use primarily pre-packaged SaaS solutions, others are leveraging more flexible
offerings to fully or partially outsource internal infrastructure. PaaS offers another option
for organizations looking for an environment to develop and customize applications.
Although these have been the standard XaaS options for several years, many cloud providers
offer an increasing range of service options. Storage as a service, communications as a
service, network as a service, and disaster recovery as a service are all now common options
for business. Another new service that is expected to increase in popularity in the coming
years is big data as a service, with the total big data market projected to reach $88 billion
by 2021.1 These offerings allow companies to leverage powerful infrastructure to collect and
analyze data more cost efficiently and flexibly than would often be possible in-house.
Public, private and hybrid cloud
XaaS options exist in the realm of the public cloud, but many organizations choose to share computing
resources in a generic third-party owned solution. This provides many benefits, such as economies of
scale, flexibility, and reduced need for maintenance. However, some organizations find they need to
create their own private cloud using proprietary servers, primarily due to information security concerns.
Many are also using a public deployment option in conjunction with in-house infrastructure in a hybrid-
cloud configuration. This allows them to take advantage of the flexibility and cost savings of the public
cloud for certain applications, while keeping other applications on-premises for compliance or other
reasons. This hybrid solution can offer many new opportunities for businesses that can’t fully outsource
to the public cloud, allowing them to benefit from cost savings and get products to market faster.
16 ©2016 WGroup. ThinkWGroup.com
The rising influence of MSPs
Another increasingly important option in cloud arena is the managed service provider (MSP).
These providers let organizations outsource their IT operations, providing security, maintenance,
monitoring, and other services. Although these companies began managing servers for organizations
remotely, many have grown to offer their own or third-party cloud services to customers. Many
can provide fully managed hybrid implementations, often including mobile-device management.
This can offer an attractive solution for SMBs without the human
resources to manage their operations in-house.
Deciding on IaaS, PaaS, or SaaS is not always as cut and dry as one would
expect. With any “as-a-service” solution, information security requirements
could diminish the value of these solutions. Some things to consider:
• IaaS is a good option when the organization has the resources to manage the environment
either by in-house or sourced resources. IaaS solutions provide the capabilities to secure data
in transit and at rest with key management firmly in your control.
• PaaS is a good option when the organization does not have the resources to manage the
environment but has the expertise and resources to manage the application. Like IaaS
solutions, PaaS solutions allow for data to be secured in transit and at rest, however there is
less flexibility on the tools utilized. A primary difference between IaaS and PaaS is that PaaS
includes the database and middleware components.
• Saas is a good option when the organization has requirements meeting the standard
configurations of a SaaS solution. SaaS solutions provide data security in transit and at rest, but
the provider usually manages the encryption keys.
17 ©2016 WGroup. ThinkWGroup.com
Some of the primary driving factors of change in IT are evolving cost structures. IT infrastructure was
once incredibly specialized and costly. With technological developments and the increased popularity
of cloud, it is now being provided more economically than ever. Businesses can move a larger
portion of their IT workload and storage onto cloud services, which can offer them almost limitless
computing capabilities cost effectively and shift the cost structures of the business fundamentally.
Cost structures are changing
Falling prices
As competitive, high-volume providers such as Amazon and
Microsoft expand in the market, costs for cloud storage, computing,
and other services have fallen rapidly. Today, a typical on-
demand application costs $1.68 per hour with the best price
offerings down nearly 12% over the prior year.2 Many have
speculated that there may be no bottom price for certain cloud
infrastructure components, as companies can theoretically offer
storage for free while profiting off of other extra services.
CapEx Vs. OpEx
Cloud-service providers fundamentally change the cost structures of the IT department. Adding IT
functionality once required a significant capital expenditure in the form of buying new servers, adding
infrastructure, and hiring new employees. Cloud providers today simply charge a monthly or per-hour
fee for usage of their services. This shifts much of IT costs into day-to-day operating expenditure.
This offers some benefits given current technology consumption models. Investing a significant sum
in infrastructure that could be obsolete in two years no longer makes financial or business sense. It
is frequently more cost effective to simply “rent” cloud services that will automatically be upgraded.
18 ©2016 WGroup. ThinkWGroup.com
Hidden costs
With the explosion of available data and the desire to bring into the organization, there is a natural
tendency to look at off-premise clouds as a way to gain faster access to new data. An alternative
is to move existing workloads to the off-premise cloud with the expectation that new data from
ancillary applications or sources outside the enterprise is now “closer” and more easily accessible.
True, in many cases infrastructure-hosting costs may be reduced vs. in-house spend. But there
will always be requirements to transfer and likely integrate off-premise hosted-data applications
(for example, accessed with mobile devices and supported through enterprise BYOD policies or
systems of engagement) with on-premise hosted data applications (systems of record). Data transfer
expense can be a hidden cost that is not accounted for in comparing cloud-service providers.
Looking at and analyzing per-instance-based costs when comparing cloud service providers
is misleading and does not reflect the real world. In data intensive environments, system and
application architectures are becoming key determinators of cost differentiation. Workload-based
comparisons running on clouds are a true indicator of cost. The following must be considered:
The true holistic workload-based cost elements that should be considered when comparing cloud service
include infrastructure cost, data transfer cost, and software cost. These cost elements are important when
comparing and contrasting cloud-provider hosting services to determine what it costs your organization
on a per unit performance basis, typically based on a workload specific benchmark that provides a
relative performance score (rps). Since workloads vary in characteristics, using this method can provide a
more realistic holistic cost analysis to help you decide which solution provider and cloud solution to select.
• What is the cost of delivering a workload? You need to consider line item cost elements beyond
the acquisition cost.
• What is the infrastructure needed to deliver a given workload?
• What are the performance requirements and how do they factor in?
19 ©2016 WGroup. ThinkWGroup.com
Infrastructure costs are relatively similar when comparing the leading providers, but this
can vary based on workload requirements. Software cost can vary based on requirements,
either by selecting hosted software from cloud solution provider vs. “porting” or requesting
that your own software and applications get moved to the hosting providers cloud.
One of the largest differences in cost between providers is data transfer cost. One leading provider doesn’t
charging anything for data transfer cost, while others charge on a per GB basis per month after the “free”
initial allocation is met. (For example, first 5 GB free, then anywhere from .05 to .19 cents per GB based
on tiering, with anything above 500TB of data per month as negotiable). Another leading provider does
not allocate or provide any initial “free” data transfer upfront and charges .08 to .21 cents per GB based
on tiering, with anything above 100TB per month as negotiable. These rates are classified as “outbound
data transfer to the Internet” where, for example, your company may be sending data to another company
or one of your customers from your data center to the application hosted in the service provider’s cloud.
The interdata center data transfer charges from each provider fluctuate even more. If your company is
spread across a country or is an international company with multiple datacenters, these costs can add up.
20 ©2016 WGroup. ThinkWGroup.com
In conclusion, when selecting your cloud service provider, ensure that you can account for and uncover
any potential hidden costs as you decide on your cloud strategy and deployment model. The following
are key components of consideration, as you complete your analysis, and identify your cloud workloads:
• Shared virtual infrastructure: For workloads that are not as critical, but need to be
provisioned, deployed, and released rapidly.
• Non-shared virtual infrastructure: For workloads requiring predictable performance or more
stringent security.
• Bare metal (non-virtual): For workloads requiring highest performance, security, and
manageability.
• Mix of virtual and bare metal infrastructure: For flexibility in deployment.
• Virtual Private Cloud: Logically isolated section of cloud in a virtual network you define, which
provides further flexibility for security and manageability.
• Build your own private cloud: For the ultimate control over configuring and managing your
infrastructure.
• Unlimited datacenter-to-datacenter networking: For replication, backup, failover for critical
workloads.
• Transparency from topology to hardware: For layered control, security, and compliance.
21 ©2016 WGroup. ThinkWGroup.com
As computing power has increased and storage has become cheaper, companies have turned to
data analysis as an invaluable tool to increase their productivity and profitability. Big and small data
are no longer relegated to massive corporations; now even small business can leverage the power
of cloud to gain a competitive advantage. Independent research studies show that between 2011
and 2015, the total amount of enterprise data grew by
800%.3 As the price of physical hard drives fall dramatically,
cloud storage prices also have significantly decreased.
Many leading cloud providers have explicitly stated that
they are seeking to offer cloud storage to enterprises for
free, while charging for other services, such as analytics.
The rise of data
Automation and autonomics are revolutionizing businesses, allowing them to increase
performance while redirecting human resources to more value-added activities in support
of the business. Cloud services make it possible for businesses to automate an increasing
amount of their workload. The computing power offered by these tools allows many businesses
to outsource repeatable processes to computers. This is particularly apparent in the IT
department, where operational costs make up 80% of the average budget.4 By implementing
automation and autonomics, businesses can reduce these costs by as much as 35%.5
However, these new tools can present several challenges for organizations. As many tasks that
were once performed by human workers are given to
automated processes, the structure of the workplace
must change. It is now important to have staff who
can oversee the automated workers, and step in as
necessary. Human employees will be more focused
on higher-level tasks, such as collaborative work,
creative work, or more complicated processes.
Increased automation
Independent research studies show that between 2011 and 2015, the total amount of enterprise data grew by 800%.
22 ©2016 WGroup. ThinkWGroup.com
Performance and security concerns have been major obstacles to cloud adoption since its
inception. Ninety percent of organizations responding to a 2015 survey said that they were either
moderately or very concerned about security in the public cloud6, while 32% of respondents to
another survey said that performance was the greatest barrier to entry into the public cloud.7
However, in recent years, security and performance in cloud have significantly improved, in many
cases even surpassing on-premises solutions. New connection possibilities create adjacency
and increase security and performance for many applications, allowing organizations to deploy
some mission-critical, sensitive applications and services in a cloud environment. Cloud providers
also are becoming increasingly mature and sophisticated in their ability to provide and assure
security. Leading providers like Google and Amazon can often offer more cost-effective security
than would be available on-premises. As companies begin to realize that they can achieve
similar performance and security with cloud deployments, adoption rates will continue to rise.
The explosion of data coupled with social, mobile
and analytic applications is challenging IT
departments as never before. CEOs now view
the rapid pace of technological innovation
as the #1 issue impacting business.8
Increased performance and security
The rapid pace of technological innovation is viewed by CEOs as the #1 issue impacting business.
23 ©2016 WGroup. ThinkWGroup.com
• Disruptive innovation affecting how
data is stored and processed, from
structured data at rest to unstructured
data in motion.
• Fast evolving software ecosystems and
application frameworks, along with what
to do with the older legacy software and
applications.
• The move from monolithic applications
to composable services.
• Re-usable iterative processing instead
of relying on linear batch processing.
So what are the issues and challenges facing organizations
looking at these new born-in-cloud technologies?
• Data is growing exponentially and demands new approaches
(both from a technology and strategy perspective).
• Hard disk drives (HDD) performance and capacity are losing
ground to keep up with the demand.
• Microprocessor clock rates have stalled.
• Network bandwith is becoming choked and cannot keep up.
• Encompassing all of the above is the demand to drive costs
down, and do more with less.
• Converged data and compute, instead of
data and compute in silos.
• Management of unpredictable workloads.
• The maturation of cloud deployment options
(private, public, and hybrid).
• Multi-tenant platform as a service options
instead of siloed IT environments.
• Open innovation and standards vs.
proprietary and “locked-in” standards.
• Dynamic services defined by software
instead of “static” infrastructure.
• New service-delivery models.
“Born-in-the-cloud technologies” are causing a re-think of IT infrastructure, in terms of:
24 ©2016 WGroup. ThinkWGroup.com
Workload readiness for cloud and the most suitable cloud-deployment types are driven
mainly by elasticity of demand and mission criticality. The following diagram provides
examples of workloads in respect to their readiness for cloud, their characteristics,
and suggested placement via the different cloud deployment models.
WORKLOAD READINESS FOR CLOUD(examples)
HighlySensitive
Data
OnlineTransactions
Regulated /AuditableProcesses
HighlyCustomized SW
(Unvirtualized)Third Party SW
READY
LESS READY
HighlyElastic Demand
Daily, monthly, seasonal variations, unknown demand or
seasonal transient needs
Inelastic Demand
High Security / Mission Critical Low Security / Non-Mission Critical
Medical Imaging(not medical records)
CollaborationTools & Email
Web Apps
Developmentand Test
Desktop andDevices
Traditional BI
(Virtualized)SaaS Apps Big Data
Analytics
Overfow Storage,Offsite Backups
Generic Compute(one-time batch jobs)
Compute-Intensive R&D**• Bioinformatics• Engineering simulations• Financial risk modeling
**Except those requiring full use of multiple cores and high performance file systems or very high bandwidths
TraditionalData
Centers
EnterprisePrivateCloud
ManagedPrivateCloud
HostedPrivateCloud
HybridCloud
PublicCloud
As another example, to better understand the current rate of cloud adoption, as well as drivers,
barriers, and considerations that are influencing the adoption of cloud computing, IBM conducted a
survey (“Dispelling the Vapor Around Cloud Computing in the Financial Services Industry”) of 1,090
IT and line-of-business decision makers around the world, including participants from 161 financial
institutions.10 The findings validate that many organizations are now considering cloud computing, with
most of the financial services sector respondents currently favoring a private-cloud delivery model.
25 ©2016 WGroup. ThinkWGroup.com
Workload Type Workload Public cloud reference
Private cloud reference
Analytics • Data mining, text mining or other analytics • Data warehouses or data marts • Transactional databases
9% 21% 11%
52% 44% 45%
Business Services • CRM or sales force automation • Email • ERP applications • Industry-specific applications
30% 21% 25% 21%
43% 48% 55% 49%
Collaboration • Audio / video / web conferencing • Unified communications • VoIP infrastructure
41% 26% 14%
34% 50% 49%
Desktop and Devices • Desktop 17% 47%
Development and Test • Development environment • Test environment
20% 16%
40% 42%
Infrastructure • Application servers • Application streaming • Business continuity / disaster recovery • Data archiving • Data backup • Data center network capacity • Security • Servers • Service / Help Desk • Storage • Training infrastructure • WAN capacity
17% 24% 24% 22% 18% 14% 17% 15% 17% 18% 15% 29%
47% 37% 40% 46% 48% 46% 46% 50% 54% 50% 47% 43%
As part of the study, respondents were asked to rate IT workloads they would consider most appropriate
for deployment in a public- or private-cloud environment. Financial services has a rapidly growing appetite
for computing resources that can more flexibly and efficiently deliver services such as conferencing,
VoIP, desktop service/help desk WAN capacity, and storage. Using a public cloud is the ideal solution
for such requirements, where the emphasis is on achieving high utilization (and therefore low costs).
The full list of 25 workloads included in the survey is shown in the table below. This table indicates
which workloads the financial services respondents preferred for public or private cloud solutions
(either currently using or planning to use the features in the next 12 months following the survey).
Workloads: Financial services respondents’ preference for public or private cloud solutions. The study asked respondents to rate 25 different workloads they had already deployed or would
consider deploying in a public or private cloud.
26 ©2016 WGroup. ThinkWGroup.com
Workloads are increasingly comprised of distributed services. Organizations are deploying
distributed applications from a variety of sources, out of business necessity, often on costly,
underutilized, replicated infrastructure. Thus, more and more “cloud native” applications
are being developed to meet these demands, and have the following characteristics:
• Parallel – they can run on distributed topologies.
• Resilient – the components are designed from the beginning for resilience/fault-tolerance.
• Elastic – services can flex up or down as required.
• Scalable – services can scale out horizontally.
• Mobile – independent of specific hardware.
• Services – have interdependencies between one another, and can be maintained either
state or stateless.
• Introduction of “microservices” – the application is broken into decoupled stateless and
stateful services.
27 ©2016 WGroup. ThinkWGroup.com
Microservices are the resulting set of services (mini applications, if you will) that arise
from the process of decomposing an application into smaller pieces. If you take a
monolithic application and segment it into many pieces, you end up with microservices.
It is an application architecture; an approach to designing applications.
This architectural approach has a significant impact on the network architecture, as it forces
broader distribution of application-affine services like load balancing, caching and acceleration to
be located closer to the individual service. Microservices as an approach is a forcing factor in the
bifurcation of the network as it separates application-affine services from corporate-affine services.
Microservice architectures are beneficial in that they are highly efficient; it separates
functional or object domains and thus lends itself well to a more targeted and efficient
scalability model. It is particularly useful when designing APIs, as in addition to the scalability
benefits it also localizes capabilities and enables isolated upgrades and new features
without necessarily disrupting other services (and the teams developing other services). This
lends itself well to agile methodologies while enabling a greater focus on API development
as it relates to other services as well as the applications that will use the service.
Microservices
Monolithic Architecture
/account
Microservices Architecture
App/config
/status
App
App
App
Billing
Polling &Notification
Config &Options
28 ©2016 WGroup. ThinkWGroup.com
In conclusion, when assessing which workloads to move to cloud, the choice of a
hosting provider and cloud platform is critical to ensure both the newer cloud native
applications as well as the older legacy applications can be supported adequately, safely
and securely. These new requirements and capabilities for cloud platforms are:
• Fine-grained integration with application
frameworks
• Multi-dimensional resource management
• Data “locality” – affinity, anti-affinity
• Compute and data convergence
• “Co-optimization” for compute, storage,
and network
The choice of a hosting provider is critical when assessing which workloads to move to cloud.
• Horizontal and vertical auto-scaling
• SLA management
• Lifecycle management for distributed
services
• Dependency management
• Distributed state management
• Multi-tenancy, isolation, and security
29 ©2016 WGroup. ThinkWGroup.com
Cloud offers many benefits to companies. It can help dramatically boost the efficiency and cost-
effectiveness of an organization, and transform IT from a cost center to a profit enabler. This has made
cloud usage nearly universal across businesses. However, despite the ever-increasing popularity
of cloud deployments, it’s important to understand that technology, software, and IT are changing
every day, and companies must stay proactive in order to adapt. Automation, increased scalability,
and lower costs can all boost profitability for IT, but managing cloud contracts, implementing new
technologies, and building a team knowledgeable in cloud can be difficult. Companies must stay
aware of changes and build a knowledge base that can be used to navigate the evolving cloud.
Staying competitive
30 ©2016 WGroup. ThinkWGroup.com
Challenges and opportunitiesToday’s cloud offers many benefits to organizations, allowing them to gain new IT functionality
faster, deploy applications more rapidly, reduce costs, and gain increased flexibility. But in order
to stay competitive and gain the greatest advantage from the evolving technology, it’s critical
that organizations stay aware of the changing challenges and opportunities that it brings.
Leaders in the cloud marketplace include Amazon, Microsoft,
Google, and IBM. They all have their pros and cons.
There are a lot of choices in the market place today for cloud providers. If you are thinking of moving
into cloud technology and services, you are most likely thinking of one of the market leaders: Amazon,
Microsoft, VMware, Google, and IBM. Your choice will depend on your specific requirements and how
the provider’s solution is best for your needs. WGroup can guide you through this selection process.
Cloud-computing business models are shifting from product- or service-based business models to
an ecosystem business model. A few years ago, technologies like ESX virtualization, products like
vBlock cloud appliance, and services like Windows Azure were competing in isolated silos. Today,
cloud ecosystems like Amazon AWS ecosystem, OpenStack ecosystem, and VMware vCloud
ecosystem have emerged, and the primary competition
is moving towards ecosystem dominance.
When we talk ecosystem, we are talking about
keystone players providing a platform for a myriad of
partners and niche players to innovate, create value,
and co-invent the future. As such, characteristics
like critical mass are very important, possibly
more important than the technology itself.
Cloud players
31 ©2016 WGroup. ThinkWGroup.com
Let’s use VMware as an example to illustrate this business model shift.
In 2008, VMware was the undisputed leader in the data-center virtualization market. They
sustained their domination with incessant innovation, and they were ruling the game on this
market, despite growing competition from Microsoft Hyper-V and open source KVM. They did
not perceive cloud threat at this time because it was easy to convince the world that they had
the technology to create private clouds and that this was all that mattered for enterprises.
However, things started to change with the
emergence of large clouds like Amazon.
Instant access to unlimited resources raised
a lot of interest from startups, enterprises,
developers, and other service providers.
People learned to use these clouds; they liked
the flexibility and started to create tremendous value out of them. Suddenly, people did not care
anymore about the hypervisor technology, which lost its importance, and companies provided
ready-to-deploy AWS software images. The threat became clear to VMware: Many developers,
startups, and enterprises (a growing ecosystem) were embracing this new paradigm.
VMware’s response was to feed a competing ecosystem with the vCloud program.
They empowered external partners like Dell or Terremark to create VMware compatible
public clouds. At that time, they recognized the importance of the ecosystem, but
they were still a technology-oriented company, and this was not enough.
More recently, VMware again reoriented their strategy by building their own
public cloud (vCloud Hybrid Services) and by providing enterprises with a multi-
cloud management system gained from the DynamicOps acquisition.
Instant access to unlimited resources raised a lot of interest from startups, enterprises, developers, and other service providers.
32 ©2016 WGroup. ThinkWGroup.com
Business ecosystems are proven models and are becoming more and more important in our
global economy. Apple with its app store ecosystem, Twitter with its APIs, and Salesforce with
its AppExchange are great example of successful ecosystems. Business ecosystems are the
underpinning principle of what we call the API economy. The IBM Watson program is also a great
example of ecosystem creation. IBM provides the cognitive platform, makes it as easy as possible to
leverage, and opens its platform to as many companies as possible for them to create value out of it.
Business ecosystems have specific characteristics which that been analyzed and summarized
in several studies. Ecosystems typically include a keystone player that provides the
ecosystem platform. This platform is being embraced by niche players, which are creating
most of the value. The business ecosystem can die or can grow, very much like living species
within natural ecosystems. The health of ecosystems is a function of critical mass (like for
invasive species), but is also a function of how the symbiotic relationships between the
ecosystem participants allow co-evolution, value creation, and continuous innovation.
Clouds are on a business ecosystem competition. But what really defines cloud ecosystem platform?
Any IT platform exposes some sort of API for others to innovate
and create value out of it. So a new question emerges:
On the typical IT scale from hardware to business
application APIs, what is the level of abstraction that
has the potential to feed successful ecosystems?
In the past decade, plenty of utility markets have
been tested, and there is now a fair amount of evidence that the winning platform is
defined by the infrastructure as a service or software-defined environment.
VMware started an empire at the hypervisor level but was forced
to make a move to the IaaS level to survive.
SUN made a move into utility computing in 2004 with their Network.com $1 per CPU-hour offering.
The underlying technology was SUN grid engine, and the workloads had to be packaged like
The health of ecosystems is both a function of critical mass – and the symbolic relationships between the participants.
33 ©2016 WGroup. ThinkWGroup.com
jobs with specific constraints. These constraints made it difficult to generate a lot of interest, and
the service was withdrawn in 2008 with only 13 customers. SUN learned from this adventure and
they had plans to launch in 2009 a cloud service very similar to Amazon. But they were acquired
by Oracle at that time, and it took several years for Oracle to recognize the importance of cloud.
Microsoft and Google started their utility-computing journey with PaaS offerings. PaaS provides a
higher level abstraction, directly targeting developers. However, for multiple reasons not foreseen
at the beginning, the PaaS market is still a niche market, and its success still needs to be built.
Furthermore, the potential PaaS ecosystems are fragmented by nature, because a single PaaS
cannot serve all IT needs. Therefore, Microsoft and Google were forced to make a recent move
toward infrastructure clouds and entered the IaaS battle in 2012 in order to stay in the game.
Cloud ecosystems are defined by their infrastructure model (defined by its APIs and behavior). But this
does not infer that infrastructure as a service (IaaS)
is the most important layer. IaaS only defines the
ecosystem keystone, and most of the value will
be created on top of this platform. Given that the
market has now selected the winning keystone
abstraction, there is no reason to fight against it.
The software-defined environment APIs
split the IT world into two areas: the
infrastructure providers who will serve the
APIs and the myriad of upper level systems
who will consume the APIs. Both areas are places in which companies are innovating.
The business natures of the areas are different, The infrastructure-providers tend to be high-volume
and low-margin businesses. The businesses built on top of these APIs are very diverse, can serve very
specific IT needs, can include unique skills or knowhow, and can potentially be high margin businesses.
A good proxy to evaluate cloud ecosystem size would be the aggregate revenue of the keystone player.
34 ©2016 WGroup. ThinkWGroup.com
Let’s first consider the three leading web-scale cloud providers: Amazon, Google and Microsoft
Azure. Amazon is currently the undisputed leader. Google is a new entrant in this battle, taking
advantage of its web scale experience and innovation capacity. There is an intersection between
the two ecosystems because Google storage service has the same API as Amazon’s S3 storage.
This is a strategic play to ease portability for application written on top of AWS storage (the likes of
Dropbox, Flickr, Smugmug, etc.). Microsoft provides cloud Infrastructure services in parallel with
their Azure PaaS offering. Their strategy is to attract and retain their large developer base.
Beside these three giants, we have the vCloud ecosystem which is
VMware’s attempt to maintain its enterprise footprint.
The latest ecosystem is the OpenStack ecosystem. The open-source OpenStack initiative was
launched in 2010 by NASA and Rackspace engineers to enable every company and organization
to build its Amazon clone. Then the OpenStack initiative acquired interest from the broader IT
community and from major companies like IBM and HP who joined the community. At that stage,
OpenStack released a second API which is now known as the OpenStack API. OpenStack
community faces a strategic choice. One option is to join Amazon’s ecosystem and provide the
reference implementation for private clouds. The other option is to run another independent
ecosystem in order to counter Amazon’s dominance. When analyzing the market leaders’ strengths
and weaknesses, it is important to consider the emerging cloud trends in the marketplace:
1. Big players have now ALL entered the web scale infrastructure
market (IaaS), fighting for ecosystem dominance.
2. Enterprises need to strategically pursue a multi-cloud approach.
• Traditional DC / private cloud / public cloud integration as intermediate tactical solutions.
• The shift to public clouds is inevitable.
• Multi sourcing for public clouds is mandatory and the only way to avoid lock-in.
• A multi-cloud management platform may be the future control point for cloud accounts. Even
keystone players fighting for their ecosystem have a Plan B with multi-cloud control (either via
acquisitions or via internal developments).
35 ©2016 WGroup. ThinkWGroup.com
The following table provides a high level summary of each of the
leading cloud vendors and considerations for selection.
Southbound Innovation
Northbound Innovation
Cloud Management
Multi-cloud
TYPE Strategic Ecosystem
• Web scale DC • Networking • Breadth of
features
• Shared services • Business
administration
• Governance • Monitoring • Capacity • Catalog
• Single pane of glass
• Brokering • Networking
Amazon Keystone player AWS
Microsoft Azure
Keystone player Azure
HP Keystone player OpenStack
VMware Keystone player vCloud
Oracle Keystone player OpenStack
Cisco Niche player vCloud / OpenStack / AWS
BMC Niche player AWS / vCloud / OpenStack
Accenture Niche player AWS / vCloud / Azure
Google Keystone player Google compute / AWS
IBM Keystone player OpenStack
3. Most of the innovation emerges in the platform services (horizontal services) and the
business automation services (vertical services), all built on top of cloud-computing APIs.
• Re-inventing the IT, given cloud-computing APIs.
• Value will be dramatically higher than traditional IT, given the new agility, scale, and speed
delivered by cloud services.
36 ©2016 WGroup. ThinkWGroup.com
Amazon Web Services
Overall strategy: “Cloud is a Disruptive Force to IT”
• IaaS Market Leader and de-facto standard
• Huge ecosystem
of system integrators, ISVs and added value service providers
Multi-cloud strategy
• They are not in this role
• However, partnership with Eucalyptus provides enterprise multi-cloud capability
Ability to serve enterprises
• Traditional enterprises fear public clouds like AWS
• However, they are using it for specific workloads
• The vibrant ecosystem is progressing fast and increases enterprise capabilities
Ability to drive an ecosystem
• Constant feature introduction
• Price structure innovation
• Developer certification program
• Technology and consulting partners > 8000
Innovation
• Availability zones
• Server, storage, network innovation
• Innovation goes up to the power supply
• Innovation in pricing
• Pave the way for platform services
• Database, Hadoop, data warehouse
• Orchestration, VPC
• Rely on partners for high level business services
Detailed leading cloud vendor comparison
37 ©2016 WGroup. ThinkWGroup.com
Microsoft
Overall strategy: “Embrace Cloud to Survive”
• Leverage Microsoft control points (tooling,
user interface, programming models) with developers and IT to build an
ecosystem of partners and solutions on the Microsoft Cloud platform
• Turn Hyper-V as a credible alternative to ESX
• Leverage ITSM toolkits into private cloud software
Multi-cloud strategy
• Very strong integration between System Center-based private clouds and Azure
• AWS management pack to monitor and manage AWS VMs - no support for OpenStack
Ability to serve enterprises
• System Center is hypervisor agnostic so can be installed on top of ESX or KVM based DC
• Hyper-V installed based (increasing)
Ability to drive an ecosystem
• Initially wanted to leverage existing .NET developers with Azure Platform
• Moved in 2012 to IaaS to counter AWS
• Current ecosystem has not reached critical mass
Innovation
• Hyper-V is gaining market shares (27% in 2012 from 11% 2 years ago – 84 % for SMBs)
• Web scale data center – in competition with AWS and Google
• Azure provides application services like data bases, queuing services
• Proven PaaS with initial Azure offering
• Azure HD Insight for Big Data Hadoop deployments
38 ©2016 WGroup. ThinkWGroup.com
Overall strategy: “Analytics and Big Data In Cloud”
• “Production container cloud” with all the security,
performance, and orchestration that implies
Multi-cloud strategy
• Focus on data security to propagate data
• Google object store has the same AWS S3 API (simple for customers to move to Google)
Ability to serve enterprises
• Strong in all layers (Google App,Google App Engine, Google Compute)
• BigQuery
• Dataflow
Ability to drive an ecosystem
• Primarily between AWS and Google adopters
Innovation
• Google compute differentiation:
– Priced by the minute
– Live migration to avoid instance shutdown
– Faster boot time
39 ©2016 WGroup. ThinkWGroup.com
VMware
Overall strategy: “Cloud is a natural extension of virtualization”
• Leverage VMware’s virtualization leadership
as a datacenter control point
• Partner with Cisco to obtain network, server, and services management
• Strong communication around SDDC
Multi-cloud strategy
• vCloud automation center is hypervisor agnostic and can manage AWS
• Based on DynamicOps acquisition
Ability to serve enterprises
• Established dominant virtualization market
• “Private Cloud” story resonates with customers
Ability to drive an ecosystem
• The vCloud ecosystem is primarily the established ESX base + the public cloud partners
• Dell, Verizon moved away
• vBlock relative success but ESX is expensive
Innovation
• Primarily focused on private cloud technologies
• Active in networking (VXLAN)
• Active in hypervisor related features (vMotion, HA)
• Partners with public providers, now opens VHS
• Moves to the upper layers
• Less innovative than Amazon
• Project Serengeti (Hadoop on VMware)
• Project Cloud Foundry – Pivotal spin-off
40 ©2016 WGroup. ThinkWGroup.com
IBM
Overall strategy: “Provides all the ingredients for cloud”
• Cloud and non-cloud assets such that they work
together as a single, end-to-end system
Multi-cloud strategy
• Hybrid clouds deploy both private cloud instances and multi-tenant public instances,
as well as on-premises servers, infrastructure components, and microservices
Ability to serve enterprises
• Bluemix DevOps framework
• Cloud Foundry for deploying PaaS software stacks
• IBM knowledge of how to run workloads in data center
• Extensive set of offerings to build complete solution
• Consulting services
• Established base of customers
Ability to drive an ecosystem
• Aggressive move into Hybrid cloud space and providing help to customers
• IBM joined OpenStack ecosystem as large contributor
• However SoftLayer does not participate in this ecosystem, thus blurring the message
Innovation
• SoftLayer innovates with bare metal offering
• Worldwide coverage is another important asset
• Proprietary API hinders developer adoption
• Broad set of deployment capabilities (patterns, orchestration, TSAM)
• Rational for Dev/Test, Platform computing for HPC
• However, the lack of strategic IBM API makes it hard to unify hybrid customer experience
41 ©2016 WGroup. ThinkWGroup.com
Oracle
Overall strategy: “Opportunistic Strategy”
• Re-engineer Oracle applications to run in Hybrid Clouds
• Cloud optimization around Oracle middleware stack
• Offers hybrid cloud experience (within Oracle)
• Recently joined OpenStack ecosystem
Multi-cloud strategy
• Hybrid experience between Oracle private and Oracle public clouds
• No clear positioning into multi cloud management
• Commitment to have all products offered as cloud services
• Mid 2015 launch of 27 cloud services
Ability to serve enterprises
• Oracle Product suite spans IaaS, PaaS and SaaS – No other company has the span of Oracle
• Oracle has 40% WW market share In App Servers and 41% in Data Base
• Lock-in effect
• Oracle positions its cloud messaging around these workloads
Ability to drive an ecosystem
• Not an actor in this space
• Joined OpenStack
• Creating price wars with AW, Google, Microsoft and IBM
Innovation
• Entered the public IaaS market
• Aim to compete with Amazon
• Build on Oracle VM for private clouds
• Oracle optimizes and adapts its core stack (Java and Data Base) to cloud
• Availability of Big Data solutions
• Targets ISV with Oracle Platform for SaaS
42 ©2016 WGroup. ThinkWGroup.com
Cloud challenges CIOs face todayMany organizations are rightfully excited about the benefits of cloud, but minimize the challenges
that it can bring. In order to properly prepare for these challenges and make good decisions
about cloud deployments, companies must educate themselves and understand the risks.
Security
Security is one of the primary concerns when implementing a new cloud deployment, particularly
in a public- or hybrid-cloud environment. Entrusting critical applications and sensitive information
to third parties can create great anxiety for organizations used to managing their IT infrastructure
themselves. In a recent survey, the top perceived threats were unauthorized access (63%),
account hijacking (61%), and malicious insiders (43%).6 It is notable that users also fear that they
cannot trust their cloud providers. 71% of respondents to a survey said that they did not think
their provider would alert them if customer data were stolen, and 72% believed they wouldn’t be
notified if confidential business information were stolen.10 One of the major sources of these
fears is a lack of visibility. One recent survey found that approximately half of an enterprise’s cloud
applications aren’t visible or fully accessible to the IT professionals on staff.12 This obviously can
create significant trust issues and leads many organizations to be wary of cloud solutions.
43 ©2016 WGroup. ThinkWGroup.com
Although there are unique security risks to using a public-cloud implementation, in reality it
is often much safer to use the public cloud than on-premises IT. Tech leaders like Amazon,
Google, IBM, and Microsoft have significant budgets, with experienced professionals working to
certify products and configurations to protect their clients’ data and applications. The IT security
departments of these providers are significantly better funded and more experienced than those
of their clients. However, it is still important to understand the security risks at play and carefully
vet cloud providers to ensure that they are a proper fit for your organization and applications.
Focus on what is core vs. non-core to your organization. Cloud usage must be business-
value aligned. Everything else should be viewed as a commodity and outsourced.
• CIOs should have a “cloud first” policy and have good business case and decision process for
non-cloud implementation.
• CIOs are now out of the business of managing data centers or being programmers and in the
business of driving business value. Finding ways to use technology to generate more revenue,
increase customer satisfaction, and improve profits are top objectives for today’s CIO.
• Cloud implementations are not a substitute for monitoring and management of the applications.
However, with cloud, technologists can focus on higher value initiatives.
44 ©2016 WGroup. ThinkWGroup.com
Financial
Cutting costs, whether IT or business-related, remains a primary driver influencing
initial cloud-investment decisions. The following diagram shows the results of a
survey conducted by Ovum of CIOs, IT managers, and IT decision-makers from
large Enterprises across US, UK, France, and Germany. It is clear that cutting
costs is the leading primary driver influencing cloud-investment decisions.
3.3
3.1
3.1
2.8
2.6
HighlySensitive
Data
Cutting IT costs
Cutting overall business costs
Improve business agility
Application modernization
Improvement of business processes
Data center or IT consolidation
Develop innovative new business activities
Improve time to market
Entry into new markets or lines of business
Merger or acquisition activities
Entry into new geographies
Layoffs or staff reduction
Entry into new vertical industries
Source: Cloud Services Business Trends Survey, Summary Results, Ovum, Jan. 2012(Survey of CIOs, IT managers and IT decision makers from large enterprises across the US, UK, France and Germany, consucted by Ovum)
4.0
3.9
3.8
3.6
3.6
3.5
3.5
3.5
Least important Most important
Source: Cloud Services Business Trends Survey, Summary Results, Ovum, Jan. 2012 (Survey of CIOs, IT managers and IT decision makers from large enterprises across the US, UK, France and Germany, constructed by Ovum)
45 ©2016 WGroup. ThinkWGroup.com
Cloud technology can help turn IT from a major expense to a significant profit enabler. By leveraging
strategic outsourcing and shifting much of the IT department to 3rd parties reduces the need to invest
in expensive infrastructure so that organizations can improve their overall profitability. Innovative
companies are leveraging cloud by using data collection and analysis, automation, and other new
technologies to reduce expenditure and increase revenues. It is critical that every organization stays
abreast of current trends in order to maximize their revenue and productivity, and minimize expenses.
Still, many organizations remain reticent about new cloud technologies and are unsure
what their real financial impact will be. IT professionals and executives need a solid
framework upon which to base their cloud decisions in order to ensure that they are
maximizing cost effectiveness and getting the most from their cloud services.
According to a study by Forrester’s James Staten,
“There’s a disturbing trend reemerging in our client inquiries of late: rising demand
for software-as-a service- (SaaS) solutions and purchases of solutions that are
not really SaaS. When we inform clients that the solution they’re talking about isn’t
SaaS, we are increasingly hearing, “So what? As long as I don’t have to run it, it’s
better.” This is a trap that can cost you more, result in less agility, and lock you into a
poor sourcing decision. Too many vendors today are seeing an opportunity to make
big profits in software-as-a- service by taking advantage of customer naiveté and
simply rebranding older deployment models as SaaS, on-demand, or cloud. These
solutions inevitably fail to live up to customer expectations for agility, standardization,
and efficiency. As SaaS continues to increase in popularity across a growing range
of application areas, technology buyers (ranging from CIOs to line-of-business [LOB]
execs) need to know what differentiates SaaS from application service providing
(ASP) and other on-demand implementations cloudwashed with the SaaS term.”
46 ©2016 WGroup. ThinkWGroup.com
The following table illustrates the important considerations for evaluating
true SaaS vs. other “off-premise” deployment models:
Tenancy
Upgrades
Payment model
Location
Responsibility for managing
the application
SaaS ASP Managed
All customers run the same version? Yes No No
Significant modifications possible?* No Yes Yes
Multitenant architecture? Yes No No
Originally designed to be SaaS? Yes No No
Who controls upgrade timing? Provider Customer Customer
Frequency of feature enhancements As often as every week Typically 2-4 per year Typically 2-4 per year
Frequency of major releases Typically 2-3 per year Typically 1 or fewer per year Typically 1 or fewer per year
How is the software priced? Subscription Subscription with multi-year commitment required
Upfront license + maintenance fee
Customer owns license? No No Yes
Where does the code and data reside? SaaS provider ASP AO provider (but sometimes at the customer site)
Who develops application? SaaS provider Software provider (may not be the ASP)
Software provider (not hosting provider)
Customer control over operation, deployment and configuration of the app
None Limited Negotiable
Vendor examples: salesforce.com, Workday, SAP’s Success Factors
BTRG’s PeopleSoft-as-a-Service offering
PeopleSoft run by Oracle on Demand, Accenture managing
SAP
*Significant modifications include: adding unique modules, changing application configurations, adding custom code, unique infrastructure, etc.
These are all very important considerations to help you choose a deployment
model for cloud and selecting your non-core services vs. core services.
47 ©2016 WGroup. ThinkWGroup.com
Understanding the changing landscape
Cloud growth, automation, and other technological changes are shaping the way business is done,
products are sold, and IT is managed. CIOs need to cope with this changing landscape by reallocating
resources, finding personnel with the right skills, and reducing redundant staff and infrastructure.
However, sometimes understanding what actually needs to be done can be challenging, particularly
if executives have limited experience working with new cloud
technology. In order to make the right choices, organizations
need to fully understand what these new
innovations can actually do for the company,
how they work, and how they should be
managed. This requires a deep understanding
of the technology and the marketplace.
Managing cloud contracts
One of the most challenging aspects of implementing cloud in an organization is managing vendor
contracts. Dealing with a range of cloud providers offering vastly different services and guarantees
can be incredibly challenging and requires a comprehensive understanding of how the contracts
are structured and what an organization really needs from the provider. Organizations must ensure
that the provider complies with all local, applicable laws, that they have necessary control over
any cryptographic keys used, that the provider has been recently audited, and many other similar
details that might be overlooked by those that do not fully understand the current environment.
Getting the big picture
In order to manage all of these concerns, each organization needs a framework to
understand where they are and where they’re going. With the shifting dynamics of today’s
evolving IT world, businesses need comprehensive situational awareness that allow them
to understand their needs and how new technologies can help them stay competitive.
Organizations must fully understand what new innovations can do for the company, how they work, and how they should be managed.
48 ©2016 WGroup. ThinkWGroup.com
Evaluating your current stateIn order to gain situational awareness and make better decisions when implementing
cloud into your organization, it is important to examine how others in your industry
are being impacted by cloud, your current state in terms of cloud consumption, and
your needs. Analyze your current organization to assess both your readiness and
“need” for adopting cloud technology along the following five imperatives:
1. Identify your reasons for using cloud: The development of a cloud-computing
strategy begins with defining the motivations and goals for migrating to cloud. The reasons
for using cloud include a range of benefits for an enterprise, although IT leaders should
usually focus on no more than three specific objectives for their strategy. Common goals
for a cloud strategy include improving IT efficiency, increasing investment flexibility,
accelerating application delivery, reducing risks, and expanding markets.
49 ©2016 WGroup. ThinkWGroup.com
• Level 1 organizations may be developing strategies for cloud, but they haven’t yet
deployed cloud applications. These organizations typically need to define their architecture
requirements, evaluate their available options, and select the applications that would be
most appropriate for cloud.
• Level 2 organizations are usually still working with proof of concepts or initial projects for
cloud. They usually need to gain additional experience with cloud before they can determine
the next steps in their cloud strategy.
• Level 3 organizations have already deployed multiple applications to cloud. They’re typically
most interested in increasing and improving their use of cloud resources.
• Level 4 organizations are already making heavy use of cloud-based infrastructures. Their
greatest area of interest is usually in optimizing operations and minimizing the costs of
working in cloud.
2. Assess your cloud maturity level: The next step in developing a cloud-computing strategy is to
assess your organization’s level of cloud maturity. This assessment determines your organization’s
current level of preparedness for migrating to cloud. A catalog of strengths and weaknesses in cloud
technology will indicate the steps needed to make this transition. Cloud analysts often categorize
organizations into four levels of cloud maturity, with level 1 indicating the least experience:
3. Develop your portfolio: Most enterprises are planning a multi-cloud strategy for
using both public and private clouds or they have already implemented such a strategy.
Organizations that maximize their vendor options for cloud platforms can take advantage
of the rapid changes in service and price that are common in this volatile industry.
4. Overcome challenges: Organizations must overcome several challenges in their journey
to cloud. The four most common of these are reliability, security, culture, and expenses.
50 ©2016 WGroup. ThinkWGroup.com
5. Select your strategy for cloud adoption: IT leaders can develop cloud-adoption strategy for their
enterprise once they have determined the reasons for migrating to cloud, assessed their enterprise’s
cloud-maturity model, planned their cloud portfolio, and identified the challenges. The options for
an enterprise’s cloud-adoption strategy include cloud-first, targeted, and grassroots. Each of these
approaches requires a separate set of considerations and procedures. An organization’s strategy for
adopting cloud will typically change as its deployment proceeds. For example, an organization may
begin with a grassroots strategy, change to a targeted strategy, and finally adopt a cloud-first strategy.
Cloud-first: A cloud-first strategy is the best choice for organizations that select cloud for all
existing applications, as well as new applications. Enterprises that choose this adoption strategy
are typically seeking to leverage public and private clouds aggressively to obtain significant
business gains. Existing projects must be evaluated for migration to cloud, and new applications
must be designed to operate in a cloud environment. The organization must evaluate each of these
applications against business and technical criteria to ensure they meet ROI requirements. A cloud-
first strategy means that the organization is fully committed to cloud, including the IT department.
Targeted: In a targeted cloud-adoption approach, the organization identifies the applications
that are best suited for cloud, which generally means they have variable demand and global
scale. These applications typically include batches runs, big data analytics, mobile applications,
and social media. Enterprises adopting this strategy typically will have limited cloud usage,
along with a desire to increase their cloud workload in measured steps. A targeted approach
generally involves developing new applications for cloud and migrating existing applications
to cloud over time. The targeted strategy is a short-term approach that should help an
enterprise gain expertise in developing cloud architectures for public and private clouds.
Grassroots: A grassroots adoption strategy generally consists of the IT department providing
individual business units and developers with a self-service portal that allows users to access
public and private clouds. The self-service portal used in this strategy should include technology
stacks that meet the enterprise’s standards, while still providing the flexibility expected of a
public cloud. Enterprises use this strategy to help business units and developers embrace cloud.
Easy on-demand access to cloud services is essential for allowing developers to enable cloud
adoption. This type of strategy is also effective when coupled with IT Operations and Service
Management improvements and raising maturity, i.e., through adoption to an ITIL framework.
51 ©2016 WGroup. ThinkWGroup.com
As the five imperatives are developed for a cloud strategy,
organizations must ask themselves many questions:
The big picture
• What is the current size, growth, and financial state of my organization?
• Do you have an acquisition or new geography launch that requires creation of new enterprise
infrastructure?
• What challenges do you face in responding to
requirements for new or changed enterprise
services?
• What cloud solutions has my organization already
adopted?
• What cloud components would my organization like
to implement?
• Why is cloud being used?
• How would the organization benefit from cloud?
• What cloud solutions are the competition
implementing?
• How mature is our enterprise architecture and governance?
• Where are there gaps between business expectations and what cloud is delivering?
• Does the organization have a cloud strategy that helps us stay competitive and reduce costs?
52 ©2016 WGroup. ThinkWGroup.com
Performance
• What are the performance requirements: CPU, memory, IPOS, network?
• What are your current SLA’s for the enterprise service (availability, performance, service
delivery)?
• How long does it currently take to add capacity for your enterprise?
• Are you able to easily scale up and down in alignment with your enterprise load requirements?
• How long does it take to install a new enterprise module?
• Are you facing any issues in procuring the HW/SW you need for enterprise applications?
• Which applications can be moved to cloud, and which must be kept on-premises based on
information security data classifications?
• Can the public cloud deliver the same or better performance as on-premises solutions?
• Are enterprise resources constrained with routine enterprise maintenance and operations that
limits their ability to support critical new enterprise projects required for business growth?
• How are you managing your virtual enterprise environments, and what improvements would
you like to see?
• Are you being asked to provide basic metering for “charge back” services?
• Are you facing high enterprise administration costs and is management labor intensive?
53 ©2016 WGroup. ThinkWGroup.com
Security and compliance
• Is privacy and security your biggest worry or concern?
• Where is sensitive information stored? Is it encrypted at rest and in transit?
• Which applications are mission critical and need to exist in an extremely secure
environment?
• Can cloud vendors deliver the same or better security as the IT team?
• What compliance regulations are relevant to the organization?
• Do you have an enterprise testing strategy?
• What does your enterprise dev/test environment look like?
54 ©2016 WGroup. ThinkWGroup.com
Vendors
• If the organization subscribes to cloud services today, are the needs of the
organization being met?
• What are the termination, indemnity, and performance clauses of existing cloud
contracts/subscriptions?
• Is the organization effectively managing its cloud vendors?
Making the move to cloud
• Will cloud be cost-effective?
• Does the organization have the knowledge and resources to maximize the effectiveness of
cloud implementations?
• What business functions can benefit from being moved to cloud?
• What deployment model is right for the organization? Will the flexibility and ease of public
cloud be right, or is there a requirement for a single-tenant cloud or on-premises private
cloud? Is a hybrid solution the best option?
• What changes in governance, architecture, and process are required to be effective?
55 ©2016 WGroup. ThinkWGroup.com
Applications
• Are you ensuring the best customer experience and adapting to changing employee needs your
most important priorities?
• Do you have many applications that are customized due to unique business processes or unique
integrations and require custom modules or extensions?
• What are your plans for growth in the enterprise application area?
• Will you be implementing any new enterprise module/solution in the following months?
• Will you be upgrading your enterprise systems in the following months?
• Are enterprise applications growing or shrinking in your enterprise and how does this affect the
cost and quality of delivering services to your customers?
• Describe the level of support required to deliver and maintain enterprise applications as well as
any inhibitors to supporting the environment.
• How does the infrastructure required to deliver enterprise applications affect your ability to deliver
services to your customers.
• What plans do you have to more fully utilize your existing enterprise application servers and how
much of your ERP infrastructure is underutilized due to being reserved for future projects?
It’s all about the applications! The architecture of the application dictates the success of
cloud implementations. Many think cloud is part of an infrastructure strategy, but it is really
an application strategy. Any strategy to migrate workloads to cloud must include
an application portfolio and architecture and security assessment.
Determining which applications can be migrated to cloud will be determined by user interface,
transaction volume, identity and access management framework, information security
requirements and component isolation (e.g. different VLANs, firewalls between UI, app, DB layers).
56 ©2016 WGroup. ThinkWGroup.com
Cost-effective cloud adoptionOne of the most important considerations when adopting new cloud technology is cost. By taking steps
to ensure that your organization is implementing cloud in a way that provides a high ratio of benefits
to costs, the organization can help make IT a revenue enabler that adds value to the organization.
Make a cost / benefit analysis
Whether your organization is implementing cloud for the first time or evaluating current
deployments, a good first step is making a cost/benefit analysis of the technology. How much
will upfront and monthly costs be for cloud deployment? How much will the company save in
productivity, increased sales, or reduced downtime? What are the costs of alternative solutions?
Repurpose existing investments
One of the most effective ways to reduce the cost
of cloud is to repurpose existing investments as
entry points. By using an enterprise-technology
framework to identify what can be reused and
what needs to be rebuilt, organizations can greatly
decrease the financial costs of a cloud deployment.
Investments made for server consolidation, ITSM,
virtualization, API adoption and development,
high availability improvements, and scripting
automations are all examples of improvements
that can be applied in particular to private cloud
deployments. These can also be a part of a hybrid
deployment or integrated into a public deployment.
57 ©2016 WGroup. ThinkWGroup.com
Here’s the example of one client, a regional South East Asia bank:
• Leverages IBM AIX Power7 virtualization technology investments, service management
program improvements and maturity, and new automation as Private Cloud Entry points to
achieve accelerated benefits.
• New technology and cloud entry enablement was funded by other enterprise initiatives,
including infrastructure modernization, optimization, server consolidation, virtualization, and
enterprise-wide new ITIL program with supporting technology. These IT infrastructure and
operations maturity improvements provided a funded cloud solution.
• Platforms and Technologies: IBM Power 7 servers, IBM x3650, x3850, IBM System Director,
LPM (Live Partition Mobility), Tivoli Service Delivery Manager (ISDM) and ITSM.
Negotiate agreeable terms
When working with public cloud vendors or MSPs, it is extremely important to negotiate terms
that meet the needs of the organization. Make sure that your organization has considered what
maintenance is included, what the uptime guarantees are, how much support is available, and what
the vendor’s reliability record is as these will all influence the ongoing cost of the deployment.
58 ©2016 WGroup. ThinkWGroup.com
Evaluating your cloud implementationTo ensure that your organization stays competitive and takes full advantage of the growing
power of cloud, it is important to constantly evolve your cloud implementation. Below are some
key questions and steps to help your organization make its use of cloud more effective.
1. Evaluation
• Identify the business challenges your organization is facing.
• How is IT affecting these challenges?
• How effective are my cloud implementations (if any)?
• How are my business stakeholders interfacing with cloud vendors without me?
2. Implementation
• What are the existing investments that can be repurposed as entry points to cloud?
• How will your internal cloud capability grow alongside your virtualized environments?
• How will you start building relationships with external cloud providers?
• As you begin to adopt more cloud solutions, how will it change your network architecture and
data center requirements?
59 ©2016 WGroup. ThinkWGroup.com
3. Ongoing management
• What cloud deployment models can be used to fill gaps, improve efficiency, and build
the business?
• Is the internal cloud and external environment more
efficient and cost effective?
• What are your current SLA’s for the enterprise service
(availability, performance, service delivery)?
• How will you maintain talent?
• How will you manage current providers and continue to
build relationships with new ones?
• Do you have systems in place to help you keep pace with
changing technology?
4. Delivery models
• How will cloud impact how you interface with your suppliers and customers and deliver
your services?
• What are the opportunities for reduced costs?
• What are the opportunities for improved efficiency?
60 ©2016 WGroup. ThinkWGroup.com
5. Financial models
• What new means of charging and paying for services does cloud allow?
• How can cloud help your organization drive profits?
• How will cloud affect IT’s ongoing budget?
• How will cloud affect IT’s capital and operational expenditures?
6. New operating models
• How do I manage security in the public and private cloud?
• What are the greatest threats to a cloud deployment?
• How do I ensure performance?
• Do existing SLAs ensure uptime?
• What staff do I need to maintain? What skills do they need?
• How does cloud affect enterprise architecture?
• How does cloud affect governance?
61 ©2016 WGroup. ThinkWGroup.com
How WGroup can helpAt WGroup, we understand that cloud has revolutionized IT and continues to
rapidly evolve. We also understand that businesses must stay proactive in order
to ensure that they remain competitive in this shifting marketplace.
In order to help you meet these goals, we work with your organization to simplify IT and allow you to
use it more effectively. We are leading experts in cloud-vendor management, cloud strategy, and cloud
evolution. We can help your organization better understand the opportunities and challenges that this
changing technology brings, so you can be equipped to make better decisions for your business.
If you’d like to learn more about how to leverage cloud’s rapid evolution to
grow your business, contact one of our representatives today.
62 ©2016 WGroup. ThinkWGroup.com
Tony Ioele has 30 years of experience across the Information
Technology disciplines with demonstrated ability to transform
business opportunities resulting in a competitive advantage,
increased customer satisfaction and positive financial impact for
his customers. Tony is a senior leader with a unique blend of
strategy, technology, security, risk, finance, personnel, operations,
business and process management skills and experiences.
Tony is known for his astute sourcing and vendor stewardship
as well as his broad knowledge and experience in the areas of
enterprise architecture, ITIL process management, COBIT/SOX
controls creation and enforcement, technical services delivery,
customer services delivery, application development and delivery,
infrastructure services and security and risk management.
Tony holds a BS from East Stroudsburg University of PA and a
Masters Certificate, Applied Project Management from Villanova.
See more at Tony’s LinkedIn profile
About the Authors
Tony Ioele, Managing Principal
63 ©2016 WGroup. ThinkWGroup.com
William (Bill) Genovese is a CTO, executive architect and
consultant with over 20 years of experience. He has a proven track
record comprised of leadership through consulting, design, and
implementation of infrastructure, applications and core systems
on an enterprise scale for global organizations. His passion
includes raising architectural maturity for organizations by aligning
business and technical strategy, and leading and inspiring people
to deliver outcomes and drive increased performance. His focus is
on both tactical and strategic architecture definition, enablement,
and delivery, through interpretation of complex subjects and
architectures, and recommendation of simple and tactical choices
while ensuring these integrate with the enterprise strategy.
Bill has a Bachelor’s Degree from Western Connecticut State
University. He also has the following certifications:
Bill Genovese, Principal
Bill is also a CTO and Executive Board member at Saving Promise, a national non-profit
organization whose charter is to help prevent and change domestic violence in America.
See more at Bill’s LinkedIn profile
• The Open Group – Distinguished IT Architect
• The Open Group – Master IT Specialist
• IBM Executive Certified IT Architect (Application Architecture,
Infrastructure Architecture and Systems Engineering Disciplines)
• IBM Expert Certified IT Specialist (Systems
Management – Cross Platform)
• IBM Certified IT Consultant
• ITIL V3
64 ©2016 WGroup. ThinkWGroup.com
Doug is a seasoned information technology executive with over
20 years of experience as an IT leader and strategist. He has
held numerous operational, program-level, and strategic roles in
a variety of industries including healthcare, manufacturing, and
technology. His areas of expertise include IT strategy, enterprise
architecture, technology governance, infrastructure modernization,
technology innovation, application rationalization, cloud strategy,
advanced analytics, and talent development. Doug is passionate
about the transformative nature of technology and focuses on
improving the organization’s capacity to adapt to change.
Before joining WGroup, Doug built and led the Enterprise Architecture
function for McKesson, a Fortune 15 pharmaceutical distribution,
health information technology, and medical supply company. Doug
began his career at IBM Global Services as an IT consultant.
Doug holds an MBA from Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business
and a BA in International Studies from the University of Alabama. Doug
is a board member of the CTO forum and an attendee of Yale’s CEO College. He has spoken at numerous
conferences on the topics of innovation, collaboration, and leading change in technology organizations.
See more at Doug’s LinkedIn profile
Doug Smith, General Manager
65 ©2016 WGroup. ThinkWGroup.com
David Spindel has over 25 years of experience in Strategy and Business
/ IT Transformation – both as a consultant and as an executive with
Fortune 500 technology companies. At WGroup, David focuses on IT
Strategy, IT Transformation, IT / Business Alignment, Sourcing Advisory
Services, IT Governance, and Organization Design and Implementation.
Before joining WGroup, David was Vice President of Corporate Strategic
Planning for Unisys Corporation and prior to that VP of Strategy for Unisys’
Professional Services and Vertical Solutions business unit. Prior to joining
Unisys, David spent over 20 years at Xerox Corporation where he held
increasingly responsible positions in strategy, product management,
strategic pricing and marketing, most recently as VP of Strategy for
the company’s $5B Document Production Systems business unit.
David has both a BA in Mathematics and an MBA from the University of Chicago.
See more at David’s LinkedIn profile
David Spindel, Principal
66 ©2016 WGroup. ThinkWGroup.com
References[1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2015/04/27/big-data-as-a-service-is-next-big-thing/
[2] https://451research.com/cloud-pricing-index
[3] http://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents/
product-briefs/big-data-cloud-technologies-brief.pdf
[4] https://www.usenix.org/legacy/event/hotos05/final_papers_backup/brown/brown_html/hotos05.html
[5] http://www.slideshare.net/cheahwk/ipsoft-autonomics-it-service-management
[6] https://esj.com/articles/2015/03/30/security-concerns-block-cloud-adoption-survey-says.aspx
[7] http://www.cdwnewsroom.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/
CDW_2013_State_of_The_Cloud_Report_021113_FINAL.pdf
[8] http://fortune.com/2015/06/04/fortune-500-ceo-survey/
[9] http://www.slideshare.net/IBMIndiaSS/dispelling-the-vapor-around-cloud-computing-7461827
[10] http://www.infoworld.com/article/2607997/cloud-security/users-
fear-cloud-breaches-are-more-expensive.html
[11] http://go.netskope.com/rs/netskope/images/Ponemon-DataBreach-CloudMultiplierEffect-June2014.pdf
[12] https://www.forrester.com/Beware+Of+The+SaaS+Trap/fulltext/-/E-RES115775
Drive Your Business
Founded in 1995, WGroup is a technology management consulting firm that provides Strategy,
Management and Execution Services to optimize business performance, minimize cost and create
value. Our consultants have years of experience both as industry executives and trusted advisors
to help clients think through complicated and pressing challenges to drive their business forward.
Visit us at www.thinkwgroup.com or give us a call at (610) 854-2700 to learn how we can help you.
150 N Radnor Chester Road Radnor, PA 19087
610-854-2700
ThinkWGroup.com