Gen-i CIO talks 'journey to the cloud'

Gen-i CIO Peter Finch has posted a blog about how to take the first steps into the cloud.

Finch admits that obstacles such as security, operational performance, reliability and control are still deterring many companies from jumping in. But says that deciding what initial services will be moved to the cloud is a logical first step.

“The cloud is delivered in different ways and organisations moving to the cloud need to decide which model best suits their needs,” he wrote. “It could be a private cloud aggregating the organisation’s own computing resources, a public cloud subscribed to on a pay-per-use basis, or a combination of both."

Finch suggests the first step is to convert your current infrastructure into a virtualised environment.

“Virtualisation turns servers into a resource that is not tied to a particular piece of hardware in a particular location, and so processing can be readily switched from one data center to another. Companies can then make an informed decision about what parts of the infrastructure they want to move to a private or public cloud, and which applications are better left on-premise.”

The next step is to move the virtualised systems to a dedicated private cloud where applications are hosted in a cloud-like environment accessed over a VPN link, used only by the organisation.

“A dedicated private cloud environment is an important step in building confidence and ‘proving’ the model, however, is unlikely to deliver all the benefits of a hosted service provider offering.

Applications like payroll, CRM, accounting and even email, as well as testing and development environments, are proven as great candidates for public cloud deployment.”

You can read Finch’s full post here.