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START WITH A STRATEGYIt’s no secret that more and more businesses are leveraging the power of the cloud. And there’s good reason for that. Cloud computing offers the promise of cost-effective capacity on demand—anytime, anywhere, and on any device.

But taking advantage of the cloud’s many benefits isn’t as simple as signing up for an account. Like any other IT tool, it has to be used strategically. Making the move requires an end-to-end strategy designed to maximize the benefits of the cloud for your unique business needs. This infopaper will help you do just that.

Why cloud?What’s driving all of the current movement to the cloud? CIOs are charged with adapting quickly to a constantly changing business landscape—while increasing productivity and lowering costs. At the same time, multiple technological trends are coming together to produce an environment in which using cloud resources makes the most sense for many businesses.

BUSINESS CHALLENGES CLOUD OPPORTUNITIES

THE SUCCESSFUL CLOUD-ENABLED ENTERPRISE What it looks like, how to get there, and why the data center you choose matters.

EASE OF SCALABILITYWith infinite resources, the cloud is the ultimate in scalability. And if you need to reduce resources, that’s easy, too.

MOBILE DEVICE SUPPORTIn many markets, mobile is the primary

platform used to access apps. If your app underperforms on mobile, you

could lose a huge customer base.

GLOBAL APPLICATION

DELIVERY You can’t serve a global business out of one data center. If you want your

app to be delivered consistently to all users,

you need to go where your customers are.

CONTENT DELIVERYWhen you need to

deliver content at scale, using a single data

center just isn’t adequate.

DATA LOCALITY AND COMPLIANCE

You want to take advantage of cloud benefits, but sometimes data needs to stay in one place to comply

with government regulations. For example, Europe doesn’t allow other governments to access records.

ACCESS TO THE CLOUD ECOSYSTEMBy sharing a data center with key network and cloud providers, you can directly connect and vastly improve the performance of your own apps.

RATE AND COST OF INNOVATION The flexibility of the public cloud is an irresistible draw for new-product innovation, since it’s much less costly than standing up new hardware.

RESPONSE TIMES How fast your app responds to users can make or break it—and positioning your app strategically in the cloud can vastly improve your response times.

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WHAT ARE YOUR CLOUD OPTIONS?When it comes to structuring your cloud, you have three options: public, private, and hybrid. Let’s look at how each of them works—and what it can offer your business.

THE PRIVATE CLOUD

Private cloud environments provide IT capacity on owned, dedicated systems. Those systems may live on-premise at your business site, or they may be hosted and/or managed by a third party.

THE HYBRID CLOUD

Hybrid cloud is a “best-of-both-worlds” approach that allows you to maximize the advantages of public and private clouds to best meet your business, IT, and user needs.

THE PUBLIC CLOUD

In a public cloud, computing power, applications, and services are provided by a third party and typically delivered over the Internet. It’s a multi-tenant environment in which IT capacity is consumed and billed as a service.

• Full control

• Fully customizable

• Enterprise-class SLAs

• Ease of auditing and compliance

• Capital expenses: Do you have the larger budget required to stand up new infrastructure?

• Skills requirements: Does your team have the skills to operate in-house equipment?

• Management overhead: Do you have the budget to cover the operational and administrative expenses?

• Inability to adapt quickly: Can you accommodate the extra time required to buy and integrate technological updates?

• Maximum agility

• Public cloud benefits

• Private cloud benefits

• Compatibility: Will your legacy infrastructure integrate with the cloud?

• Depreciation: Can you absorb the costs of the depreciation of your pre-existing infrastructure investments?

• Migration risk: Can you handle the security risks of moving data?

• Pay-as-you-go billing

• Flexibility and agility

• Massive scalability

• Simplicity of management

• Continuous enhancements

• Regulatory requirements: Can you meet your industry’s standards?

• Security concerns: Is your data too sensitive to live safely in a shared environment?

• Level of data control: Can you store, move, and manage data in the way you need?

• Cost control: Can you accommodate the fluctuating costs of pay-as-you-go?

• Customization: If you have highly specific needs, can a standardized public cloud meet them?

• Mission-critical applications

• High security requirements

• Data protection regulations

• Controlled environments

• Because the hybrid cloud is simply a combination of both the public and the private clouds, it can accommodate all of your application deployment needs and address fluctuating resource demands.

• General applications like email and CRM

• Global application delivery

• Fluctuating/season resource usage

• Development and testing

• Scientific data processing

IS IDEAL FOR

ADVANTAGES

CONSIDERATIONS

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HOW TO GET THERE: YOUR JOURNEY TO THE CLOUD Once you understand the cloud options, you can begin planning and executing your cloud deployment strategy. You’ll have the most success if you take a three-step approach.

OPTIMIZE YOUR NETWORKNetworks are a key component of cloud computing. So one of the first steps in moving to cloud enablement is to architect a network that is capable of delivering applications and services that meet your user and performance requirements.

First, learn everything you can about your users. Understand their needs, locations, and expectations, which impact choices you make about how to set up your network—and your overall cloud strategy.

Next, take a look at your application performance requirements and establish targets for a good user experience.

Once you understand your users and application requirements, you’re in position to optimize your network. Consider the use of Network Performance Hubs (NPH) to give you cost-effective, high-performance network and IT services.

NETWORK PERFORMANCE HUBS

• Are deployed near specific end-user communities.

• Live near major interconnection points.

• Offer newer technologies like carrier Ethernet for higher bandwidth, better performance, and improved manageability, often at a substantially reduced cost.

USER CHARACTERISTICS

ü Location

ü Type (employee, customer, partner, etc.)

ü Applications/services used

ü Accessed devices

ü Usage patterns (time of day, length of interaction, etc.)

APPLICATION TARGETS

ü Network latency

ü Required average bandwidth

ü Maximum bandwidth consumed

WHAT TO CONSIDER

Are your users globally distributed? You’ll likely want to consider moving to data centers with a global reach, so you can serve applications from locations that are close to your users.

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DISTRIBUTE APPLICATIONSWith a high-performance network in place, you’re ready to strategically distribute your applications and data for the best user experience.

How? You may want to converge application infrastructure and deploy application performance nodes that are connected to NPHs. Or you may decide to deploy private clouds in a number of key locations to serve your data needs.

Typical benefits of a distributed application environment:

• 40% less variability in end-to-end transit time by making use of NPH architecture1

• Up to 50% faster page load times2

• 80% reduction in downtime by moving to higher-quality networks and facilities3

• Maximum performance for business-critical and latency-sensitive applications

The relationship between latency and application performanceSome applications are impacted by latency much more than others. Before you optimize your network, learn which applications fall into that category.

Email Collaboration

Archive/ DR

Finance

Analytics

Maintenace

www/HTTP

Voice

Virtual Desktop

Transactional Applications

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Videos

Trading Desk

Imaging Applications

DocumentManagementProcurement Collaboration

LOWER-PRIORITY APPLICATIONS PRIORITY APPLICATIONS REAL-TIME APPLICATIONS PROXIMITY APPLICATIONS

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LATENCY SENSITIVITY

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BRIGHTROLL

By leveraging Equinix’s network-rich data centers, BrightRoll was able to launch the fastest real-time bidding solution in the digital video ad industry, reducing RTB network latency by 80%.

For BrightRoll bidders, every millisecond counts. See how Equinix helped BrightRoll raise successful bids by 48%.

1,2“Optimizing Internet Application Performance,” http://info.equinix.com/rs/equinixinc/images/WP-Optimizing-App-Performance.pdf

3“More Bandwidth Doesn’t Matter (much),” https://docs.google.com/a/chromium.org/viewer?a=v&pid=sites&srcid=Y2hyb21pdW0ub3JnfGRldnxneDoxMzcyOWI1N2I4YzI3NzE2

Watch Video >

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BECHTELLEVERAGE INTERCONNECTION OPPORTUNITIES

If you want to take advantage of the huge community of compute, storage, application, and platform cloud providers available in the cloud ecosystem, you’ll want to locate your infrastructure in neutral data centers where you have the most choices among providers. Connecting directly with those services will give you a great deal of flexibility to adapt, grow, and manage your infrastructure in the hybrid environment.

International construction contractor Bechtel made the move to hybrid cloud.

Bechtel previously connected its global on-premise data centers with expensive leased lines. Then the company made the move to hybrid cloud with Equinix, repositioning its data centers at the most critical interconnection points around the globe.

BENEFITS

• 40% reduction in network costs

• Reduced latency

• Enabled direct connection to an ecosystem of SaaS service providers such as Workday and Salesforce.com

450+ CLOUD & SAAS PROVIDERS

110K+ CROSS-CONNECTS

Extend IT Capacity and Improve User ExperienceWith foundational infrastructure in place, like Network Performance Hubs, you can deploy private cloud in neutral data center locations and connect to a wide range of suppliers, services, and network providers to deliver the highest-quality user experience.

500+ IT SERVICES PROVIDERS

CONTENT DELIVERY NETWOKS

950+ NETWORK

PROVIDERS

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YOU CAN USE THE PUBLIC CLOUD FOR EVERYTHING.

False. Some of your workloads may require higher levels of customization, performance, and oversight than most public cloud operators can provide.

YOU CAN’T BE SECURE IN THE CLOUD.

Actually, you can be as secure as you want to be. Many providers offer custom solutions tailored to meet the security requirements and standards of industries such as healthcare (HIPAA) and credit cards (PCI).

THE PUBLIC CLOUD WILL ALWAYS BE CHEAPER.

Not necessarily. For resources that are needed constantly, enterprises can achieve ROI quickly by leveraging other cloud models, such as shared resources delivered via a private cloud. However, when you have particularly “spiky” demand, owning the base and renting the spike is both cheaper and game-changing.

YOU CAN’T MOVE LARGE AMOUNTS OF DATA IN THE CLOUD.

Sure you can. You just need the right architecture. Within an Equinix data center, you can directly connect to cloud providers and move substantial amounts of data across Gigabit or 10 Gigabit links.

Doing cloud right: the successful cloud-enabled enterpriseWhen you take full advantage of the cloud’s enterprise capabilities with a smartly designed strategy, the list of benefits to your business can be very long indeed.

GLOBALIZEPlace app servers close to global users and connect directly with relevant networks to provide an optimal end-user experience.

REDUCE COSTSpend less—a lot less—on your cloud

operations with the most efficient mix of owned hardware, public cloud

services, and private cloud security and management capabilities.

INCREASE AGILITYAdd new systems and services quickly. Spin up and tear down

workloads as necessary.

MOBILIZESupport an increasingly mobile workforce—and customer base—by delivering apps and content in high volume at high speed

CONNECT WISELYChoose from a wide range of suppliers, services, and

network options.

IMPROVE PERFORMANCELeverage more capability, smoother manageability, and faster performance of IT network and systems infrastructure.

RIGHT-SIZE YOUR NETWORK Build a base in the private cloud and leverage the public cloud for usage peaks.

ACCELERATE DEVELOPMENTBreak the 6- to-18-month app

dev cycle by testing in the readily available public cloud,

where initial costs are low. Then move apps to the private

or hybrid cloud for better performance and cost savings.

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CLOUD MYTHS

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Make your move to Equinix.

Contact Us

WHY EQUINIX IS RIGHT FOR YOUR CLOUD STRATEGYBecause it allows businesses to leverage all of the benefits of both the private and the public cloud, the hybrid cloud has fast become the IT infrastructure model of choice. In fact, in 2014, the hybrid cloud is expected to hit a tipping point in gaining ever more rapid adoption among businesses.

But not all hybrid clouds are created equal. For example, not all hybrid clouds can offer the security necessary for many enterprise functions, and not all of them can provide the direct access to key network providers that gives your applications such a dramatic boost in performance.

That’s where Equinix comes in. The Equinix model of distributed data centers allows you to tap into cloud services and build a cloud strategy with the guidance and infrastructure you need. By creating your enterprise cloud in an Equinix data center, you can design the ideal future-proofed IT infrastructure, incorporating public and private cloud and legacy infrastructure to form the ultimate hybrid cloud with the highest performance imaginable. There’s no better place to leverage everything the cloud can do for you.

With Equinix, you get much more than just an airtight place to house your infrastructure. You get a powerful competitive advantage—with the global reach, technology, and cross-connect options that offer the ultimate conditions for the successful cloud-enabled enterprise.

HERE’S HOW

LEVERAGE THE WORLD’S LARGEST PUBLIC CLOUD—WHILE MAINTAINING THE SECURITY OF YOUR PRIVATE CLOUD.

With Amazon Web Services (AWS) Direct Connect inside Equinix, you can place physical security appliances at interconnections between databases, application servers, and web servers. This enables you to:

• Seamlessly integrate system components and establish a level of security and control comparable to a private network.

• Define security policies on a per-app basis.

• Achieve predictable network performance and deliver a more consistent end-user experience.

• Move large volumes of workloads in and out of AWS —faster, more securely, and at a much lower cost than public network connections.

TAP INTO OUR MASSIVE GLOBAL NETWORK.

When it comes to a vast global presence, no data center provider can match Equinix—with the most locations in the world. We’re where you are now, and where you need to be in the future. What does that mean for your business? By reducing the distance between your users and the services they consume, you’ll experience greater performance and drastically reduced latency.

(AWS) DIRECT CONNECT

TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THE WORLD’S LARGEST INTERNET ECOSYSTEM.

Our revolutionary, hyper-connected data centers house robust and thriving ecosystems that give you unprecedented access to your users, customers, partners, providers, and target markets. As a result, when you choose Equinix, you have more options than with any other data center provider for building power and performance into your hybrid cloud.

95+ DATA CENTERS

31 KEY MARKETS15 COUNTRIES5 CONTINENTS

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