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White Paper Series THE TRANSFORMATIVE BENEFITS OF CLOUD COMPUTING

The Transformative Benefits of Cloud Computing

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Over the past year, cloud computing underwent a wave of increasing awareness and adoption as many organizations became convinced it can securely and effectively meet the demand for improved IT efficiency.

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Page 1: The Transformative Benefits of Cloud Computing

White Paper SeriesThe TranSformaTive BenefiTS of Cloud ComPuTing

Page 2: The Transformative Benefits of Cloud Computing

The Transformative Benefits of Cloud Computing2 The Transformative Benefits of Cloud Computing3

Over the past year, cloud computing underwent a wave of increasing awareness and adoption as many organizations became convinced it can securely and effectively meet the demand for improved IT efficiency. Cloud computing has proliferated so rapidly because, when compared to a dedicated IT environment, it delivers businesses higher levels of information availability, and increased staff productivity, at a lower cost.

With a virtualized, secure infrastructure that is scalable and reliable, an organization gains the benefits of a shared IT infrastructure without having to implement and administer it directly, taking the pressure off IT staff. For both corporate and governmental IT departments immersed in the struggle to control cost, execute daily maintenance responsibilities, and support mission-critical activities, this efficiency has been the key selling point.

It took years for virtualization to gain wide business acceptance. Cloud computing, by comparison, is showing a much swifter ramp-up. That’s in large part because so many organizations already rely so heavily upon virtualization—and because the business benefits of cloud are more immediately clear.

Enterprise Cloud Services

Trend: Outsourcing Infrastructure

Across the business landscape, companies have been seeking greater efficiency by tapping into the investments that IT service providers continue to make in infrastructure, automation, and technology. These organizations want to get out of the business of owning and maintaining their own infrastructure, and cloud computing has been picked up in the current.

The results from an August 2010 survey by Yankee Group confirm the trend, with 24 percent of large enterprises with cloud experience saying they are already using Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), and an additional 37 percent expect to adopt IaaS during the next 24 months.

IaaS adoption will only accelerate as cloud offerings evolve and new security enhancements and service improvements are introduced. The varied cloud solution technologies and standards will continue to converge, as well, to better address customer needs.

At the root of the growing business interest in cloud is the return an organization can realize on its investment in Infrastructure as a Service. However, differing approaches to calculating a return on investment (ROI) will yield differing outcomes. The best approach an IT organization can take to determining the ROI of its investment in cloud computing is a comprehensive one. Although a drop in CapEx is one of the big benefits of cloud, a comprehensive approach looks beyond just a reduction in capital expenditures. A thorough ROI analysis will consider the IaaS solution from several angles, including the strength of the service provider, and the effect that cloud’s inherent scalability will have on cost.

Resiliency is the Key to SuccessOur 21st century society has become so accustomed to changes and new developments that genuinely progressive concepts are initially not recognized and adopted. Given time and an imperative economic justification, there is then a rush to implementation once the benefits become obvious. Virtualization is a good example of this, with the technology available for a decade before its benefits really became widely understood and appreciated.

White Paper SeriesCLOUD COMPUTING

Key Considerations for Leveraging Virtualization and Keeping Your Applications AvailableToday’s IT organizations are faced with the daunting task of optimizing all aspects of their departments, including people, processes and technology. Optimizing and streamlining server utilization through virtualization represents one particularly exciting example. We found that one of the most popular usage models for virtualization is to drive down server procurements in development, test and production environments. When this model is followed, future server purchases are avoided; instead, new workloads are established on existing systems.

KEY CONSIDERATIONS FOR LEVERAGING VIRTUALIZATION

White Paper Series

The Real Value of Cloud ComputingWhether your business is involved with it yet or not, cloud computing will play a significant role in the future of IT: it has already been enthusiastically embraced by small and medium sized businesses and its potential is also being accepted and exploited by larger enterprises.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the view that any business seeking to reap the benefits of cloud environments should not only look at the cost of cloud services but the value they provide.

White Paper SeriesaVaIlabIlITy SeRVICeS Cloud InfRaSTRuCTuRe

Cloud Computing: Resiliency is the Key to Success

Availability Services Cloud Infrastructure: The Real Value of Cloud Computing

Key Considerations for Leveraging Virtualization and Keeping Your Applications Available

Further Reading

Check out these SunGard white papers for more insight into moving toward effective and reliable cloud services.

Interactive Video

Click here to watch a demonstration of SunGard Enterprise Cloud Services.

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The IT Benefits of Moving to Cloud Computing

As an organization considers migrating to an IaaS environment, it should note the following benefits that its IT department can realize:

1. Simplified Cost and Consumption Model. One of an IT department’s fundamental objectives is to align its initiatives with core business needs, which include both cost reduction and support for mission-critical activities. Because cloud computing has a cost structure that functions in many ways like a utility billing model, IT infrastructure becomes an operating expense. This allows the organization to reduce capital expenditures and spending on hardware and applications to support non-core activities.

2. Enterprise-grade Services and Management. Typically, between 70 and 80 percent of IT budgets are devoted to the maintenance of existing infrastructure. Cloud computing offloads the burden of this massive overhead, freeing core IT resources to focus on initiatives that drive revenue growth.

3. Faster Provisioning of Systems and Applications. Traditional approaches to buying and configuring hardware and software are time consuming. Cloud computing provides a rapid deployment model that enables applications to grow quickly to match increasing usage requirements. It can accommodate peak usage periods when a company needs to scale up dramatically, such as a holiday season or special event.

4. Right-sizing to Address Business Changes. Cloud is elastic, and can contract as necessary to meet changing business needs. If a company over-provisions its in-house data center, it can’t scale back. With cloud, an organization can quickly and easily right-size its environment.

5. Ease of Integration. An increasing number of enterprise applications require integration with third-party applications that are often hosted outside the enterprise firewall. With configuration flexibility, integrated security, and a choice of access mechanisms, cloud has a natural ability to serve as both platform and integration fabric for these applications.

6. Highly Secure Infrastructure. By taking a system-based, as opposed to point-based, approach to security, cloud environments can handle security at every level—applications, middleware, operating system, compute/store/network, etc. This supports the security requirements of highly mobile users utilizing a variety of connection types to access the cloud from both secure and non-secure networks.

7. Compliant Facilities and Processes. Many midsize companies don’t have the resources in place to manage the audit and certification processes for an internal datacenter. Cloud providers with the ability to address both can help companies handle regulatory compliance.

8. Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery. Managing business continuity and disaster recovery internally requires a dedicated focus, so companies typically concentrate only on the most critical applications. Utilizing cloud environments allows organizations to safeguard their full IT infrastructure because the cloud’s inherent scalability integrates disaster recovery capabilities.

The benefits of cloud are transformative because, by replacing in-house infrastructure with a scalable and efficient service, they allow an IT organization to move out of a functional role based on procurement and maintenance and toward a leadership role founded on guiding and participating in core business initiatives. At the same time, the infrastructure is stronger and more resilient, the IT organization is leaner and more efficient, and the core business scores a major financial, operational, and strategic win.

Key Considerations for Infrastructure as a Service

When developing an Infrastructure as a Service strategy, there are four key areas organizations should closely consider:

1. Business Assessment. IaaS will not replace everything in an internal computing environment. Just as many companies have a mix of Software as Service like salesforce.com and internal systems like ERP, organizations will take a blended approach to infrastructure, as well. A good starting point is for the organization to conduct a cloud readiness assessment to determine which applications have the best business and technical reasons for moving to the cloud. Next, the organization should develop a roadmap for efficient migration that mitigates operational risks.

2. Security. Just as in the early days of managed services when providers had to prove to customers they could address both physical and logical security, cloud providers must demonstrate multiple layers of data protection for enterprise-grade security and application availability. For example, organizations should look for cloud environments that provide dedicated virtual machines that are logically isolated and protected to secure data.

3. Compliance. Providers must demonstrate they have embedded the appropriate services, controls, and procedures to support a customer’s compliance requirements and to help customers gain the confidence they need to move applications to a cloud environment. Compliance standards are both universal, like Sarbanes-Oxley, and industry-specific, like PCI DSS and HIPAA. A service provider should demonstrate its cloud environment and processes address customer needs for both types.

4. Services and Service Level Agreements. Cloud computing is only truly beneficial when the right services are part of the solution. While many mainstream IaaS providers offer an unmanaged, do-it-yourself cloud, some organizations require managed services, backed by the appropriate service level agreement, to be part of the overall solution. An organization has to evaluate its specific needs as they relate to managed services and consider service a key criterion when evaluating vendors.

CYCLE30 TURNS TO SUNGARD AVAILABILITY SERVICES; ENTERPRISE CLOUD SOLUTION RUNS ORDER-TO-CASH BILLING OPERATIONS

CHALLENGE:Cycle30 launched its order-to-cash billing service and needed a fast, reliable, cost-effective way to boost application availability and create a growth path to meet anticipated customer demand.

SUNGARD SOLUTION:SunGard Availability Services has provided Cycle30 with a combination of enterprise cloud computing, dedicated managed hosting and advanced recovery services. As a result of the blended solution, Cycle30 is able to focus on customer service and business growth without committing precious capital resources to expanding and managing its datacenter to support operations. Cycle30 also has the information availability it needs to meet the demanding, around-the-clock billing requirements of customers.

Customer Success Story

CYCLE30

Real-world Success: Cycle30

SunGard Availability Services has provided Cycle30 with a combination of enterprise cloud computing, dedicated managed hosting and advanced recovery services. As a result of the blended solution, Cycle30 is able to focus on customer service and business growth without committing precious capital resources to expanding and managing its datacenter to support operations. Cycle30 also has the information availability it needs to meet the demanding, around-the-clock billing requirements of customers.

Download the case study.

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