CLOUD COMPUTING 101HANDBOOK

WESTCON RECOMMENDS MICROSOFT® SOFTWARE

CLOUD 101Introduction to Cloud Computing ..................................................................................................................1 - So what is the cloud? - Public Cloud - Private Cloud - Hybrid Cloud

Technology Evolution ..........................................................................................................................................3

Stages of Technology Evolution ........................................................................................................................5

Cloud Computing and You .................................................................................................................................6 - The Backdrop: Online Banking

Your business and Cloud Computing ..............................................................................................................8 - The enterprise opportunity - What does the cloud do for IT?

How do I deploy to the cloud............................................................................................................................8

Which Cloud will work for you ..........................................................................................................................9 - Public Cloud vs. Private Cloud - Accessibility - Security - Selecting either a Public or Private Cloud - The new darling – The Hybrid Cloud

Products in the “Cloud ........................................................................................................................................10 - What is this “aas” thing?

Mythbusters - The truth of Cloud Computing ..............................................................................................11

Westcon Group’s approach to cloud ...............................................................................................................12 - How can we help? - Our services - What is our differentiator?

Cloud Roadshow - how can we help you .......................................................................................................14

Glossary of IaaS .....................................................................................................................................................15

Generic Cloud Computing and General Computing Terms .......................................................................16

INTRODUCTION TO CLOUD COMPUTINGSo you have heard about the cloud. In fact you may even be using the cloud in your business. But do you really understand what the cloud is? Furthermore do you realise the business opportunities it could present to your organisation and where to take this next?

At WestconGroup Southern Africa we have undertaken to give you a snapshot of the cloud, the business opportunities it presents to your company and a quick guide on what it really means to be “in” the cloud.So what is the cloud?There are so many definitions on what “cloud computing” is. But we are going to simplify it even further.

The cloud is a metaphor for the Internet and transacting over the Internet. The cloud is not limited by hardware, “cloud computing” means that you store, access, transact over and work in/over the Internet.

To understand what the cloud is you need to know what it is not.• The cloud is not your hard drive – that is considered local or physical infrastructure

• The cloud is not your company network – that is still your internal LAN or WAN

• The cloud is not just the Internet – the Internet as we now know it is not just a web page filled world

• The cloud is not your data centre – again that is local or physical infrastructure

But then even though IT created this notion of cloud computing they took it further and created even more clouds. No these aren’t cumulus, stratus or cirrus. They are instead the public cloud, the hybrid cloud and the private cloud.

Lets look at a definition of these now to create context – but know we will unpack their role in your business a little later.

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DATACENTRE CAN BE:ON OR OFF PREMISE: - HYBRID - PRIVATE - PUBLIC

* EUC - END USER COMPUTING

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Public Cloud - A public cloud is based on a standard cloud computing model, where a service provider (think Google or Amazon) makes resources, such as applications and storage, available to the general public over the Internet. Public cloud services may be free or offered on a pay-per-usage model. *

Private Cloud - Private cloud (also called internal cloud) is a marketing term for an enterprise computing architecture that’s protected by a firewall. Promotion of the private cloud model is designed to appeal to an organisation that wants more control over their data than they can get by using a third-party hosted service.

Hybrid Cloud - A hybrid cloud is a cloud computing environment in which an organisation provides and manages some resources in-house and has others provided externally. It marries the best of the private and the public cloud and gives the user the ability to still critical business processes (data) onsite.

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BUSINESSAPPLICATIONS

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PUBLIC CLOUDAMAZON WEB SERVICES

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“Cloud computing is really a no-brainer for any start-up because it allows you to test your business plan very quickly for little money. Every start-up, or even a division within a company that has an idea for something new, should be

figuring out how to use cloud computing in its plan.”- Brad Jefferson, CEO and Co-Founder of Animoto

TECHNOLOGY EVOLUTIONMainframeMaking it Real - Technology Evolution Time Line

The Internet, was designed in 1974, though it did not open up until the 1980s.

According to “Banking and Finance on the Internet,” edited by Mary J. Cronin, online banking was first introduced in the early 1980s in New York. Four major banks - Citibank, Chase Manhattan, Chemical and Manufacturers Hanover - offered home banking services.

NETWORK FILE SYSTEM:The file system that brought us to the age of network storage. No longer would your data be hostage to the computer in which it was created ‘ or to backup tape.

THE BROWSER:It made the Web work for the rest of us and became publicly available.

WINDOWS 95:32-bit pre-emptive multitasking made possible everything that has come along for the desktop since ‘ including the graphical Internet and Mac OS X.

LIGHTWEIGHT DIRECTORY ACCESS PROTOCOL:The universal administrative assistant (mostly in the form of Microsoft Outlook/Exchange) for the cubicled middle rank ‘ and a nursemaid for their bosses. Broadcast.com becomes one of the world’s first online radio stations. Amazon.com began as an online bookstore and has gone on to form one of the greatest ecommerce sites the internet has ever seen.

WORLD WIDE WEB:Invented by Tim Berners-Lee, it would soon change the way governments, business and people operate.

OUTLOOK:Outlook.com is a free webbased email service run by Microsoft. One of the world’s first webmail services, it was founded in as Hotmail.

GOOGLE:We’d call it the portal to the Web, except portals aren’t this easy to use. The search bar is rapidly becoming the sippy cup of culture ‘ with more than partial thanks to Wikipedia, Google’s query shortstop.

BROADBAND:Cable and Digital Subscriber Lines start to make an appearance in homes, and telecommuting becomes a real option.

E-MAIL:Electronic mail goes back tothe 1960s, but -it really started taking off with Web use. By 1997,the volume of business e-mailsurpassed that of regular mail.

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VIRTUALISATION FOR X86 ARCHITECTURES:Making the most ofwhat you have.

WI-FI:The network computer Libre!BLACKBERRY: Life support foryour government executive,with its push technologymaking the difference.

YOUTUBE:Youtube.com was launched.

MICROSOFT.NET FRAMEWORK:A virtual machine independent ofprogramming language. The future of Microsoft development.

OPENSTACK:Rackspace Hosting and NASA jointly launched an open-source cloud-software initiative known as OpenStack. The OpenStack project intended to help organizations offer cloud-computing services runningon standard hardware.

SPOTIFY:Spotify reaches 75million paid for users in June 2015. Spotify is a Swedish commercial music streaming, podcast and videoservice that provides digital rightsmanagement-restricted content from record labels and media companies.

NASA’S OPENNEBULA:Nebula is currently an Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) implementation that provides scalable compute and storage for science data and Web-based applications.

WIKIPEDIA:The Wikipedia online encyclopedia is founded by Larry Sanger and Jimmy Wales.

SERVICE ORIENTEDARCHITECTURE:SOA and Web servicespave the way for a newgeneration of onlinegovernment services.

SKYPE:Skype launches it’s free VoIP software.

UBER:UBER launches and changes the face of public transport.

GOOGLE GLASS:Google Glass launched to the public. Google Glass is a type of wearable technology with an optical headmounted display (OHMD).

FACEBOOK API/GOOGLE OPEN SOCIAL API:Social network programming goesmainstream.

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STAGES OF TECHNOLOGY EVOLUTIONIn order to see where we are going we need to understand where we have been. Where did tech start?

With the mainframe, we then moved to smaller mainframes or servers. After this we took a giant leap with the notion / concept of virtualisation – were we said that by making use of software we could make one server / mainframe believe it was many. So IT shrank and paved the way for mobility to be born. Suddenly we weren’t strapped to our desks and we

could move about. In this era the Internet was born and it started shaping how we did things. Ok so we missed a few momentous steps in this – but we don’t want to give you a history of computing in its entirety but rather a quick view of the cloud.

So the Internet, which is in simple terms is the mother of Cloud Computing, came the birth of this “era” we are now nin. But we aren’t just here – we are starting to dip our toes in a new world called the Internet of Things (IoT) or machine-tomachine computing. In this world you can use your phone to talk to your toaster over the cloud. It is real and it is here.

What’s next? The guys with the big brains are suggesting that the next phases of IT, of which traces are emerging, are Autonomic Computing and Artificial Intelligence. But that’s ahead of us. Lets focus on where we are … In the cloud.

* Autonomic computing is a self-managing computing model named after, and patterned on, the human body’s autonomic nervous system.

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“I don’t need a hard disk in my computer if I can get to the server faster… carrying around these non-

connected computers is byzantine by comparison.”- Steve Jobs, Late Chairman and Co-Founder of Apple

CLOUD COMPUTING AND YOUSo do you use the cloud? Most people’s first reaction is no. But lets ask you another question… Do you make use of Internet Banking or do you use Dropbox?

Yes? Then you are in the cloud. So lets use Online Banking as an example to explain the evolution of cloud computing and the progression people take to getting to making use of the cloud as a de facto standard in how they prefer to transact with service providers.

The Backdrop: Online BankingWhen last did you venture to your bank or a branch? Not very often do you. It is almost a forgotten era where large buildings housed row upon row of tellers, who would greet you by your first name and stamp your little leather bound savings booklet with every transaction. Today instead of reaching for your keys to make a financial transaction, do you not reach for your keyboard or your phone?

This behaviour is not dissimilar to what cloud computing has done for general business. Would you prefer to hop in your car to drive to a physical environment to have a meeting, collect data or information, fulfil a simple transaction – orwould you prefer doing it from your desk.

The cloud gives people back time. It encourages productivity, speed of deliver and customer service efficiencies that have never before been seen. Online banking stripped away the physical layers with which people were comfortable and gave them options. It wasn’t an either or – but through its progression and its maturity people have become comfortable with it and now to a large extent prefer it.

Take this a step further and put it into an enterprise context and cloud computing is the delivery of computing resources as a service. What resources? Software, platforms, infrastructure, storage, databases, security and even backend resources which are then all delivered via a model called “as-a-Service” – we will further break down the “as-a-Service” offerings we see today a little later.

Apple MusicWith Apple Music I don’t have to buy music anymore. By simply paying a monthly subscription I have the music I like streamed to my phone and iPad whenever I want it and wherever I want it.

DropboxI use Dropbox to store my files and I can access them from my phone, tablet and my laptop.

FacebookI make use of Facebook to stay in touch with friends and family, update them on my day to day family activities and nmore importantly to see what they are up to.

FlickrI don’t have albums anymore. I make use of Flickr and sometimes even Facebook to store my digital photo memories I take from my smartphone.

Google MapsI don’t need a GPS device anymore. My phone with Google Maps helps me plan routes, avoid traffic and even select public transport options in my area.

KindleI love to read. Now with the cloud I download all of my favourite books onto my Kindle and I no longer have to lug large paperbacks around with me.

Office 365I connect to my documents on SkyDrive and via my phone, my tablet and my laptop. Its great to be mobile and engaged no matter where I am.

PinterestI get a view of all my hobbies and interests on Pinterest. I can pin ideas and share ideas with a network of likeminded people around the globe.

SkypeI love staying in touch with my family overseas, but calls are just so expensive. However with Skype I can see them, talk to them and even instant message them all through the day.

TwitterI use Twitter to stay up to date with news and events that are of interest to me. I follow #hashtags that are of importance to me.

UBERI don’t have a car, but today I make use of UBER to get too and from work, and to the Gautrain.

WazeTraffic is a nightmare today. I wonder if I can proactively tell my friends and family to take a different route by using the crowd sourced power of Waze to know exactly what the traffic situation is like.

XBOXPlaying games on my own used to be so dull but now with XBOX Live I can chat to friends while they play from the comfort of their couch, stream new games and even join clans and groups from all over the globe.

WHERE DOES THE CLOUD TOUCH YOU AND WHERE DO YOU TOUCH THE CLOUD?

CLOUD

“Cloud computing is often far more secure than traditional computing, because companies like Google and Amazon can attract and retain cyber-security personnel of a higher

quality than many governmental agencies.”- Vivek Kundra, former federal CIO of the United States

HOW DO I DEPLOY TO THE CLOUD?Cloud deployment refers to the enablement of SaaS (software as a service), PaaS (platform as a service) or IaaS (infrastructure as a service) solutions that may be accessed on demand by your business.

The beauty of the cloud is that you can cherry pick what you want to live in the cloud and dictate what you put there at any given point.

Where you need to identify a couple of factors:• What is my organisational appetite for the cloud?

• Do I really need my own cloud?

• Does my service provider have the right security policies in place?

• What do I need to keep internal and what can I move quickly to the cloud?

• Can my staff and customers benefit from the cloud?

• Will the cloud save me money in the short and long term?

• Do I have the skills to migrate the cloud?

• Do I have the right partners and vendors in place to help me get to the cloud?

• Are local cloud providers ready?

YOUR BUSINESS AND CLOUD COMPUTINGSo lets summarise. Cloud computing is a delivery of a host of services and technologies via the Internet. It refers to things being hosted off site, in the cloud or both, as opposed to things being only housed locally or onsite. It doesn’t require bricks and mortar but rather a collection of technology end points or devices that come together to deliver services to your teams, your customers or consumers.

The beauty of the cloud is that it provides options – there is no this or that – there is always the option of both or many.

The opportunityWith the cloud businesses can transform operations, cut costs and increase efficiencies and productivity. How?

• Making use of the cloud to access software as opposed to installing suites on each device. This will help you alleviate the pressures of managing licensing requirements, streamline costs and free up valuable IT resources.

• For storage where you can now put your data in a secure environment in the cloud and then offer remote access to all work related data.

• Mobility, to help create a mobile environment (the mobile cloud) that enables your employees to engage and interact with your business anywhere and on any device. As well as a means to let your customers engage with nyour services or products within a mobile environment.

What does the cloud do for IT and you?• Creates efficiencies within the IT department

by leveraging offsite resources and minimising the need for additional internal staff to support onsite systems

• Allows IT to roll out applications and systems more efficiently, provisioning solutions on the fly

• Makes use of offsite teams to support applications such as email, productivity suites and even business systems

• Customised platforms can now afford businesses the ability to roll out mobility solutions for field workers and field sales teams

• Offers a single view of IT administrative tasks

• Reduces the load on your infrastructure and conversely the load on your IT teams

• Standardisation of business systems, solutions and user profiles

SHOULD THE CLOUD FORM PART OF YOUR BUSINESS STRATEGY?

When we looked at launching a cloud programme for our reseller partners in 2014 we realised that there are large gaps in the industry with regards to what the cloud really is, what it can do for business, as well as the existence of a large disconnect between the perceived and real values the cloud can bring to business.

I’ve probably said it more times than I should have over the last two years, but cloud computing is not going anywhere, so it’s about time we – and you – get comfortable with this massively transformative technology.

According to Gartner, “The use of cloud computing is growing, and by 2016 this growth will increase to become the bulk of new IT spend. …2016 will be a defining year for cloud as private cloud begins to give way to hybrid cloud, and nearly half of large enterprises will have hybrid cloud deployments by the end of 2017.”

Why now? IT is sitting at a precipice. We have two camps of businesses. Those that have made massive infrastructure investments and who are now at a point where they need to decide whether or not they should rip and replace or shift to the cloud. The other camps are the new

By Leane Hannigan, Cloud Solutions Director at WestconGroup Southern Africa

businesses, organisations that are in a unique position where they can leapfrog straight into the cloud. Many of these are termed “born in the cloud companies”.

While Gartner’s predictions for this year are seemingly optimistic the trend cited by infoworld.com, is that companies will start migrating large scale applications into the cloud as well as build new “digital and mobile first” applications. The natural home of these is the cloud.

So what cloud should you select? There are three popular models. The private cloud which you own and you host on premises. The public cloud, where you rent or hire space from a public cloud provider - think Microsoft, Amazon or even Dropbox. And then what is proving to be the most successful and popular model, the hybrid cloud, where you marry your private cloud with a public cloud and ensure you have workload mobility between these two environments.

The real benefit of the hybrid cloud is that it delivers on the cost savings promise of the cloud as well as the scalability and flexibility that IT shops crave. In fact, again according to Gartner, half of large enterprises will

have hybrid cloud deployments by the end of 2017. These findings are consistent with analyst firm IDC’s predictions that spending on cloud software will exceed $112.8 billion by 2019.

In South Africa, I still believe that there are a large number of businesses that do not fully understand the benefits available to them from adopting cloud. Our own findings from the surveys conducted at out Cloud Acceleration Programme (CAP) officially launched last year, highlighted that many of our resellers still have a massive thirst for knowledge around cloud. And I don’t just mean what it is, or how it works; what they want to know is what cloud can do for them.

As an industry, and in our position as a distributor of IT products and services we believe that it is our role to help customers unravel the spaghetti messaging the industry has made around the cloud, and clarify to business, the true value of cloud computing.

For more information on Westcon-Comstor’s CAP programme as well as a full view of its cloud products and services contact Thiani Naicker on +27 11 848 9119 or thiani.naicker@westcon.com.

WHICH CLOUD WILL WORK FOR YOU?Public Cloud vs. Private CloudIf we take a look at the definitions previously provided private cloud implies it is your cloud, your systems and you dictate how people engage with these, whereas public suggests it is another’s systems on which you host your solutions and access them entirely via the Internet.

Both have their benefits and both have their disadvantages.

AccessibilityPublic clouds allow you to replicate data to many applications with a single login through the Internet. It is ideal for multi-branch organisations that have offices around the globe. Limitations creep in when there is bandwidth constraints.

SecurityPublic clouds are publically accessible which does mean that customers who have client sensitive data they need to store in the cloud are today a little reticent to put this all in the cloud. While there are security solutions that firewall your data – it’s a risk profile that many are still navigating.

Here the private cloud comes into play, especially for financial services companies and even telecommunications organisations that want to safeguard their customer data. Businesses elect the private cloud over the public cloud as a means to get around potential security concerns.

Selecting either a Public or Private CloudThe reality is that the public cloud is much easier to deploy. You purchase the service and you roll it out amongst your users, immediately reducing the need to adjust your current infrastructure investments in order to scale into the cloud. With it you pay for what you use. It is very attractive to small to medium businesses who want to move away from needing IT resources to “support” them.

Conversely the private cloud’s dedicated hardware and bandwidth resources make it an attractive option for many large enterprises. Yes it provides resources on demand, but it also preserves your current infrastructure investment as well as enables you to dictate your security policies, offers dependable availability and a high level of control.

The new darling – The Hybrid CloudBoth private and public clouds can be advantageous to your business so why chose? You don’t have to. With the hybrid cloud you can make use of the best of both worlds, retain control, dictate security and outsource and insource as and when you need to.

Remember a hybrid cloud is an infrastructure that includes links between one cloud managed by you (private cloud) and at least one third party cloud (public cloud). In the hybrid cloud your “clouds” do not have to meet, but instead offer different services to different parts of your organisation based on your company’s appetite for both.

It is scalable, flexible and manageable – it remains in your control.

PRODUCTS IN THE “CLOUD”Today there are so many cloud products that you may feel a little out of your depth when selecting what suits your business. Again, do not follow and either or approach when you don’t need to. The cloud enables you to pay for what you use, so now you are afforded variety in the choices you take and the choices you make.

What is this “aas”thing?So we promised you a view of the “as-a-Service” offerings that the cloud purports. Here are a few that may or may not be relevant to your business. However will enable you to understand the propeller heads better next time you engage.

SaaS - Office 365 is the combination of familiar Microsoft Office collaboration and productivity tools that are today delivered through the cloud. With Office 365 your people can take advantage of anywhere access to email, web conferencing, documents, and calendars. The suite comes complete with business-class security built into its core and is today supported and backed by Microsoft. It is perfect for all businesses, whether you are a small business or multinational enterprise, and offers customisable plans to fit your businesses unique needs.

SaaS - Adobe Document Cloud provides a modern and efficient way in which to engage with your documents in the cloud. With its incorporation of Adobe Acrobat DC, you can now leverage e-signing capabilities. In addition it offers and integrated set of services that use a consistent online profile and personal document hub. In short it lets you create, review, approve, sign and track documents whether on a desktop or mobile device. It also integrates with systems of record such as CRM, HCM, CLM, and CMS.

SaaS - The Microsoft Enterprise Mobility Suite (EMS) is a comprehensive cloud solution made up of three components. Designed to address the urgent need for solutions that help organizations and their employees remain flexible and productive, the EMS also ensures that corporate data is secure. The EMS enables your organisation to manage your IT, Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) and Software as a Service (SaaS) in a cost effective method.SaaS - SkyKick has launched a tool focused on helping large businesses to Microsoft’s (MSFT) Office 365 softwareas-a-service (SaaS) offering. SkyKick

Enterprise Migration Suite was designed to enable IT solutions providers to shift their larger customers to Office 365, making it simpler to move organisations with between 250 and 10,000 users to the cloud quickly and cost-effectively.

SaaS - Symantec Protection Network, a software as a service (SaaS) platform designed to deliver easy-touse security and availability offerings to small and midsized businesses at a price they can afford. The first SaaS offering from Symantec, Symantec Protection Network – Online Backup Service enables cost-effective, reliable backup and restoration of business-critical data from the convenience of a web browser.

DaaS – New Citrix solutions deliver application-centric cloud services-itrix cloud services solutions that enable organisations to take advantage of the best security, performance and reliability whether workloads run in the datacentre or in an external cloud. No matter whether the apps and data live on-premises or off-premises, users get the same experience. Citrix XenApp allow enterprises to take advantage of hybrid clouds, provisioning desktops and apps to on-premises datacentres, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and other public and private clouds.

IaaS - Oracle Cloud Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) StrategyOracle Cloud Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) offers a set of core infrastructure capabilities like elastic compute and storage to provide customers the ability to run any workload in the cloud. The services are great for developers and infrastructure services and include: Compute Service to leverage elastic compute capacity to address growing business needs; Storage Service to provide a secure, scalable, reliable and simple storage solution to meet all of your enterprise needs; as well as Messaging Service to leverage dynamic messaging capabilities for workflow agility.

PaaS - Microsoft Azure is a cloud computing platform and infrastructure, created by Microsoft, for building, deploying and managing applications and services through a global network of Microsoft-managed and Microsoft partner nhosted datacentres. It provides both PaaS and IaaS services and supports many different programming languages, tools and frameworks, including both Microsoft-specific and third-party software and systems. (Source: Wikipedia)

MYTHBUSTERS – THE TRUTH OF CLOUD COMPUTING With anything that is new and that is misunderstood come a number of myths and the cloud is no exception. Cloud computing is itself shrouded in myths and misperceptions – the very things that are slowing its adoption and impeding innovation in the industry. So here are a few myths that we would like to bust on your behalf.

Myth 1: My data is not secure with the cloud...Some clouds are not and it’s important to check withthe cloud provider that you are engaging with. But as a general rule anyone who is putting together a cloud based datacentre is ensuring they have the security solutions in place to ensure your data is encrypted and secure. Companies make use of a defence-in-depth approach to provide physical, logical, and data layers of security features and operational best practices.

Myth 2: I am not allowed to store my data outside the borders of South Africa...Thanks to our friends at Microsoft for this answer. There is no law in South Africa that prohibits you from storing your data outside the borders of South Africa. The PoPI Act refers to the Protection of Personal Information and, as citizens of South Africa, how we need to treat information. Financial data and records can be stored outside South Africa provided you meet the requirements of SARS.

Myth 3: I need to be connected to the Internet all the time...Not always and not with all applications. Lets look at Office 365 as an example here. You can work on your documents, emails and content in an offline state and when you are ready you can connect to the Internet and synchronise your data and emails. You do not have to be connected to be productive. This is the same for applications such as Amazon, Google Drive and even Dropbox.

Myth 4: There is not enough bandwidth in South Africa...We hear this one all the time. Yes some companies have small lines, but its not because the bandwidth isn’t available it is more a case that they aren’t on the right package, or don’t know what is available to them. What’s more, there has been significant investment into fibre bandwidth solutions, giving South Africa access to the Internet and improved bandwidth speed. This has driven lower pricing. Currently cost-effective fibre communication to your office is common and soon you will see fibre in your home.

Myth 5: It’s cheaper to do IT myself...No IT services aren’t traditionally cheap, but the cloud has changed that. Remember as an SME customer as an example there are a number of costs to factor in, for example the costs of your server and licensing at the time of deployment, versus over a three-year period. What was the true cost of running this yourself? For instance if email is down how much did this cost your organisation? Have you considered these factors when evaluating how much cheaper a solution such as Office 365 is for your business. The cloud takes the pain out of maintaining, running, refreshing and even hosting your IT solutions – ultimately making the costs much cheaper.

“Flying by the seat of the pants must have been a great experience for the magnificent men in the flying machines of days gone by, but no one would think of taking that risk with the lives of 500 passengers on a modern aircraft. The business managers of a modern enterprise should not have to take that risk either. We must develop standard cloud metrics and ROI models, so that they can have instruments to measure success.”

- Dr. Chris Harding, Director for Interoperability and SOA at The Open Group

HOW DISTRIBUTION FITS INTO THE PICTURE

WESTCON GROUP’S APPROACH TO CLOUDSo there you have it. The cloud is an nebulous technology that provides you the ability to scale, to encourage flexibility, take advantage of manageability and it gives you the power to change your IT environment into what you need it to be.

About Westcon GroupWestcon Group, Inc. is a value added distributor of categoryleading unified communications, network infrastructure, data centre, cloud computing and security solutions with a global network of specialty resellers and IT professionals. The Westcon Group’s teams are located in 70+ countries around the globe, create unique programmes and provide exceptional support to accelerate the business of its global partners.

Strong relationships enable partners to receive support tailored to their needs. From global logistics and flexible customised financing solutions to pre-sales, technical, our customers and engineering assistance, we work with partners to respond with agility and speed to changing market conditions so they can achieve the fastest time to revenue. Westcon Group’s portfolio of market-leading vendors assist us to help our clients reach their business goals such as:

• Global company, headquartered in Tarrytown, NY, USA

• Over US$5 billion in revenues

• Founded in 1985

• Present in 70 countries, across 6 continents

• With over 110 offices, we ship to more than 100 countries

• 25+ logistics/staging facilities

• Backed by 3,000+ associates

• 20,000+ transacting customers globally

You Your IT Professional

Distribution Vendor

WESTCON GROUP CLOUD SOLUTIONSAt Westcon Group we are working with a host of cloud vendors and cloud partners to help you understand the cloud as well as internalise it in your own business. It is not our goal to develop a cloud and sell you cloud real estate – instead we want to be you and your IT professionals cloud vending machine. Enabling you to select solutions best suited to your business, providing you with the training andmigration tools you need to make the cloud a reality.

How can we help?Westcon Group Cloud Solutions works with our customers, (ISUs, ISPs, Systems Integrators and Cloud Aggregators Resellers list).

Partnering with your IT professional of choice we can:• Identify cloud opportunities in your business

through better leveraging IT

• Identify which cloud vendors are best suited to your business needs

• Build cloud models, private, public or hybrid, that will suit your needs and your budget

• Assist in creating a cloud roadmap that meets your requirements

• Help you bring cloud skills and competencies into your business at a pace and preferred financial model that meets your needs

We are able to help you mobilise business through your IT professional, to be a cloud business by offering you access to the hardware, software, services, support and even third party financing you need to transform into a business of tomorrow delivering services today through an IT professional of your choice.

If you do not have an IT professional business to support your nbusiness, please contact us on: thepromise@westcon.com

Westcon Customers / Resellers (IT professional companies) As a distributor of IT products, today our

customers are made up of a collection of resellers and partners who work with you the end user customers to build and develop technology solutions to meet today’s demanding business challenges. These resellers form a community of about 3500 companies within the Southern African region and are a collection of small to medium sized businesses right through to large-scale IT enterprises that meet the needs of the most challenging IT requirements.

What is Westcon’s differentiator?We provide our customers with the most comprehensive set of cloud offerings and software solutions, from a vendor, partner and services perspective.

• Today we are the most recognised distributor for cloud services and software solutions locally

• There is simply no other distributor in the region that has the vendor base in place we have or who is as advanced as we are with solution bundles that can support hybrid cloud solutions

• We can provide our partners and their customers access to hardware and software as well as services

• Everything in the cloud needs a license and we can provide you access to these through a host of cloud and Service Provider / Hosting licensing models

Why Resellers Partner With UsAs a strong strategic partner, we offer superior account management backed by a dedicated team of responsive and reliable experts who are totally focused on our partners’ business. We offer the financial strength and breadth of global capabilities to manage their changing needs.

Why Vendors Partner With UsAs a value-added distributor, we are focused on creating the programmes and support that accelerate the business of our partners. We support our global reseller base with senior level, experienced management teams that are located in region and have the legal and commercial relationships to efficiently address global markets. We are uniquely qualified to deliver and integrate complex unified communications, security, and network infrastructure technologies.

GLOSSARY OF IAASBackup as a Service (BaaS)BaaS is a subcategory of Storage as a Service (SaaS) and is pretty much explained in the name; it’s a service that provides users with a system for the backup (often remote), storage and recovery of computer files. You can think of it as virtual backup-stock.

Cloud as a Service (CaaS)CaaS can be defined as any resource that is provided over the Internet but the most common cloud services include Software as a Service (SaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS).

Communications as a Service (CaaS)CaaS is an outsourced communications solutions that can be leased from a single vendor and enables the consumer to utilise Enterpriselevel VoIP, VPNs, PBX and Unified Communications without actually purchasing, hosting or managing the infrastructure. It saves the enterprise/consumer money and manpower.

Content as a Service (CaaS)This service deals with content that can be delivered as a web service and offers hosted content storage.Data as a Service (DaaS) nThink of DaaS as the cousin of Software as a Service. DaaS means that data can be provided on demand to the user no matter wherethey are or the separation of provider and consumer.Database as a Service (DBaaS) DBaaS is a cloud-based approach to the storage and management of structured data. As a cloud-based service it gives users flexible, scalable, on-demand performance that’s aimed at creating selfservice nand easy management, particularly in terms of provisioning a business’ own environment.

Data Management as a Service (DMaaS)Data is one of a business’s most valuable assets, but if it is not managed right, is can also cause a business to fail. DMaaS is when a company outsources the validation, storage, protection and processing of data to another party. This party ensures the safety, accessibility, reliability and timeliness of data for data users.

Data Mining as a Service (DMaaS)This is the same as Data Warehousing as a Service.Data Warehousing as a Service (DWaaS) Data warehousing is the electronic storage of a large amount of information by a business. Therefore DWaaS is when a business entrusts the warehousing of their data to another party. Storage of company

data must be secure, reliable, easy to retrieve and easy to manage. As the amount of data company’s deal with continues to increase this cloud-based data analytics solution takes a large weight off the shoulders of businesses.

Development as a Service (DaaS)Here your developers can make use of cloud based IDE, which will then allow them to develop applications by just making use of a browser.

Desktop as a Service (DaaS)A cloud service is which the back-end of a virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) is hosted by a cloud service provider. This is service is usually purchased on a subscription basis and the service provider manages the back-end responsibilities of data storage, backup, security and upgrades.

Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS)Cloud-based disaster recovery as a service is the replication and hosting of physical or virtual servers by a third party to provide failover in the event of a man-made or natural disaster.

Hardware as a Service (HaaS)A service provision model for hardware that is defined differently in managed services and grid computing contexts. In managed services, HaaS is similar to licensing and in grid computing it’s a payas-you-go model.

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)A form of cloud computing that provides virtualised computing resources over the Internet. IaaS is one of the three main categories of cloud computing services, alongside Software as a Service and Platform as a Service. In this model, a third-party provider hosts hardware, software, servers, storage and other infrastructure components on behalf of its users.

Integration as a Service (IaaS)Making use of the cloud to develop or make use of tools that offer integration between your business applications. You can leverage this to integrate backend systems, sources, files and operational napplications. The IaaS model enables integration across the cloud, making it possible to share data between systems as well as third party vendors in real-time.

Monitoring as a Service (MaaS)MaaS handles the deployment of monitoring functionalities for various services and applications within the cloud, offloading a large majority of costs

by having it run as a service and opposed to an in-house tool. The most common application for MaaS is online state monitoring, which tracks certain states of applications, networks, systems, instances or any application deployable within the cloud.

Network as a Service (NaaS)NaaS is a business model for delivering network services over the Internet on a pay-per-use or subscription basis. What it means is that the network becomes a utility that’s paid for and all complexities are hidden from view. NaaS saves businesses money on network hardware and the staff it takes to manage a network in-house, because now the network is a managed service within the cloud.

Platform as a Service (PaaS)Hosted software that serves as a platform for building SaaS offerings. It provides the capability for consumers to have applications deployed without the burden and cost of buying and managing hardware and software.

Security as a Service (SaaS)SaaS is a business model in which the management of security is outsourced to a third party. It usually

involves applications such as anti-virus software delivered over the Internet but SaaS can also refer to security management provided in-house by an external organisation.

Software as a Service (SaaS)Basically, SaaS is any software offered remotely as a service. SaaS is the ability for a consumer to use on demand software that is provided by the service provider via a thin client device, for example, a web browser over the Internet.

Storage as a Service (SaaS)SaaS is when third party providers rent space on their storage to end users that lack the budget or technical personnel to implement and maintain their own storage infrastructure.

XaaS (Anything as a Service)XaaS refers to the delivery of IT as a Service through hybrid cloud ncomputing and refers to either one or a combination of: Software as a Service (SaaS), Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), Communications as a Service (CaaS) or Monitoring as a Service (MaaS).

GENERIC CLOUD COMPUTING AND GENERAL COMPUTING TERMSAggregator - A cloud aggregator is typically a “cloud broker” that will then package and integrate multiple cloud computing services into one or more services of your choosing.

Artificial Intelligence – The development and creation of computer systems that is able to perform tasks that usually require human intelligence/intervention.

Autonomic Computing - Autonomic computing is a self-managing computing model named after, and patterned on, the human body’s autonomic nervous system. An autonomic computing system would control the functioning of computer applications and systems without input from the user, in the same way

that the autonomic nervous system regulates body systems without conscious input from the individual. The goal of autonomic computing is to create systems that run themselves, capable of high-level functioning while keeping the system’s complexity invisible to the user.

BYOD - BYOD is short for bring your own device. In the consumerisation of IT, BYOD, is a phrase that has become widely adopted to refer to employees who bring their own computing devices – such as smartphones, laptops and tablets – to the workplace for use and connectivity on the secure corporate network.

Channel - The system of intermediaries between the producers, suppliers, consumers, etcetera, for the movement of a good or service.

Cirrus - Lacy or wispy clouds that form at high altitudes, generally before a change in the weather.Cloud Computing - The practice of using a network of remote servers hosted on the Internet to store, manage, and process data, rather than a local server or a personal computer.

Crowdsourcing - The practice of obtaining needed services, ideas, or content by soliciting contributions from a large group of people and especially from the online community rather than from traditional employees or suppliers

Cumulus - Large, white, puffy clouds that generally appear during fair weather, although they also form thunderheads on hot days. Some carry rain.

Datacentre - A data centre (sometimes spelled datacentre) is a centralised repository, either physical or virtual, for the storage, management, and dissemination of data and information organised around a particular body of knowledge or pertaining to a particular business.

Distributor - A distributor is an intermediary entity between a the producer of a product and another entity in the distribution channel or supply chain, such as a retailer, a value-added reseller (VAR) or a system integrator (SI). The distributor performs some of the same functions that a wholesaler does but generally takes a more active role.

Hybrid Cloud - Hybrid cloud is a cloud computing environment which uses a mix of on-premises, private cloud and public cloud nservices with orchestration between the two platforms.

Infrastructure - IT infrastructure refers to the composite hardware, software, network resources and services required for the existence, operation and management of an enterprise IT environment. Itallows an organisation to deliver IT solutions and services to its employees, partners and/or customers and is usually internal to an organisation and deployed within owned facilities.

Internet of Things - The Internet of Things (IoT) refers to the evergrowing nnetwork of physical objects that feature an IP address for Internet connectivity, and the communication that occurs between these objects and other Internet-enabled devices and systems. It is also known as machine-to-machine computing.

ISP - An ISP (Internet service provider) is a company that provides individuals and other companies access to the Internet and other related services such as Web site building and virtual hosting. ISU – Internet Services Unit. Refer to ISP.

IT - Information technology (IT) is the use of any computers, storage, networking and other physical devices, infrastructure and processes to create,

process, store, secure and exchange all forms of electronic data.

Private Cloud - Private cloud is the phrase used to describe a cloud computing platform that is implemented within the corporate firewall, under the control of the IT department.

Public Cloud - A form of cloud computing in which a company relies on a third-party cloud service provider for services such as servers, data storage and applications, which are delivered to the company through the Internet.

Reseller - In information technology, a reseller, also sometimes known as a value-added reseller (VAR), is a company that typically buys products such as computers in bulk from a manufacturer / distributor and then “adds value” to the original equipment by including specific software applications or other components.

Service Provider - A service provider (SP) is a company that provides organisations with consulting, legal, real estate, education, communications, storage, processing, and many other services. In this case the provision of IT, Internet or cloud services.

Stratus - Low clouds that stretch over large portions of sky, creating overcast conditions.

Vendor - A vendor, also known as a supplier or a hardware / software supplier and is a company that manufactures and then sells goods or services to someone else in the economic production chain. In the channel, a reseller will secure vendor products from their distributor.

Sources:Techtarget.comWhatis.Techtarget.comWebopedia.comDictionary.reference.comMerriam-webster.comTechopedia.comInvestopedia.comWikipedia.com

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