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Kickstart Your Transition to the Cloud

With Cloud Computing Services from Sun

Effectively aligning IT resources to support Moving to the cloud — a strategic


global business demands is critical to commitment
survival in a global economy. The prevailing When considering a move to the cloud, it is
centralized, hierarchical business operational recommended that you implement a strategic
model is being swept aside by a rapid analysis (Figure 1) to evaluate the readiness
response, distributed model. This model of the enterprise to migrate. As part of
empowers employees, partners, vendors this analysis, you can identify the relevant
and customers to address changes in global opportunities created by transitioning to
business conditions around the clock, the cloud and define the requirements and
and it is highly dependent on technology architecture of the target deployment. In
for communicating, collaborating, and addition, this analysis allows you to identify
transacting business. Traditional methods the needed changes to IT operations, prepare
for planning, procuring, and deploying IT a risk assessment, and prepare a financial
facilities and infrastructure are less effective, impact assessment. These elements can
and the significant increase in demand for then be combined to create a well-founded,
IT resources is outstripping available power, compelling business justification for the
space, cooling capabilities, and budgets of required transformation.
many organizations.

“Cloud computing is an operational model for enabling


Highlights
convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool
• Leverage cloud computing to build
of configurable computing resources that can be rapidly
computing environments with provisioned and released with minimal management effort
improved efficiency, security, and or service provider interaction.”
agility National Institute of Standards and Technology, August, 2009
• Provision resources on-demand,
achieve operational efficiency, and
optimize your datacenter with cloud A cloud computing strategy can provide a A cloud computing strategy is implemented
computing more flexible and responsive IT environment by identifying and distributing specific,
• Sun’s comprehensive cloud to support the rapidly changing needs of a suitable business tasks onto the public and
value proposition, experience, distributed enterprise model. Sun Professional private Internet, using attached compute,
and expertise makes it uniquely ServicesSM can help you plan, architect, storage, and network resources to facilitate
suitable to advise you on your cloud implement, and support a cloud computing more cost effective and responsive services to
computing efforts environment that aligns with your enterprise users. A cloud computing environment helps
• Successfully plan and implement requirements. enable a more open, flexible, and sharing IT
a cloud computing strategy with environment that leverages technology to
Sun Services through a structured exact significant business advantage.
methodology with minimal risk

Sun Microsystems: Solution Brief


2 Kickstart Your Transition to the Cloud

However, a cloud strategy can create • Industry best practices • IT strategy and governance policies
significant stress on an enterprise shifting to
• Application profile analysis • IT operations analysis
such a dynamic, user driven IT environment.
This stress can be identified and mitigated • IT infrastructure analysis • Security policies
prior to the move by conducting a cross-
• Datacenter design and analysis • Audit requirements
functional evaluation of cloud opportunities
and impact.

Sun Microsystems has been implementing Cloud Strategic


cloud computing concepts for several years. Planning and Analysis
Sun Professional Services can help you plan,
architect, implement, and support a cloud
computing model that aligns with your • Architecture patterns • Operational changes
enterprise requirements.
• Deployment patterns • Policies
Challenges of enterprise IT • Service Level Agrements (SLAs) • Risks
The evolution of the enterprise datacenter
• Metering and billing model • Financial justification
over the years has been driven by a wide
range of often inconsistent organizational,
operational, technical, and business
Figure 1. The process of cloud strategic planning and analysis encompasses the full range of
considerations. Meanwhile, the different
organizational considerations and results in technical and non-technical requirements and
technologies that have come and gone
insights.
have often left behind a residue of legacy
infrastructure and applications. As a result,
that can scale on-demand. Resource usage • Platform as a service — provides fully
many enterprise datacenters maintain
can be measured and attributed to different configured, virtualized servers on-demand
infrastructure and applications that are
applications, while multiple applications can • Software as a service — provides fully
cumbersome, inefficient, difficult to manage,
securely share the underlying hardware and functional applications or software
and expensive to maintain. More significantly,
increase resource utilization. infrastructure services on-demand
many of the enterprise datacenters evolved
with little consideration for optimal use
Virtual machines and virtual appliances Cloud traits
of power and cooling. As a result, today’s
are the prevalent abstraction and unit of All cloud types share the following key traits:
challenges in power availability and cost,
deployment on the cloud. Currently, new
added to the increasingly demanding
architectures are emerging that allow you • Services are available to all consumers
requirements to reduce carbon emissions, are
to deploy virtual machines in a simple and • Physical resources are abstracted and
creating severe difficulties for enterprise IT.
elastic manner with virtually no scalability pooled regardless of their location
limits, achieving high capacity and economy • Users can self-provision virtual resources
Characteristics of cloud computing
of scale. • High-resolution usage-tracking and service
Cloud computing does not represent a single,
measurement are available
well defined technological implementation.
Clouds types • Resources are elastic and rapidly
Rather, it is a collection of operational
Clouds can be categorized according to the provisioned
models, architectures, and technologies
service layer that they provide (Figure 2). • The cloud is accessible and controlled by
optimized to enable you to efficiently
These include: software
provision and operate IT — networking,
• Network access to the cloud is ubiquitous
computing, storage, and software — as
• Infrastructure as a service — provides • Multiple logically isolated users, or tenants,
encapsulated services over the network.
storage, networking, and computing can be accommodated
These encapsulated services are provided to
resources on-demand
applications as elastic, virtualized resources
3 Kickstart Your Transition to the Cloud

Cloud categories To minimize the exposure of the enterprise to • Because enterprise data can be distributed
Clouds can be categorized as public, private, the risks of cloud computing in general, and in many locations, it is difficult to achieve
or hybrid: information mismanagement in particular, the inter-operability, scalability, and
you need to implement an ongoing effort to sufficient network bandwidth to support
• A public cloud provides a flexible, educate users and track activities. adequate service levels for computing on
pay-per-use IT environment that helps the cloud.
the business to better match actual IT A few examples of the challenges facing • Implementing high-resolution monitoring
demand to expenditure, to decrease the enterprise when implementing a cloud and metering of IT infrastructure and using
capital outlay for IT infrastructure, and computing strategy are: the resulting data presents challenges
to shift IT investment and risk to a third at the technical, operational, and
party. In addition, users typically realize • Distributing data and sharing physical organizational levels.
access to greater IT functionality along resources in multiple locations creates IT
with automatic, faster control over the governance issues relating to regulatory Challenges unique to the public cloud
deployment of IT resources to support their compliance, security, and privacy. While public clouds are similar to private
work. • Many software vendors have not adapted clouds from a technological perspective,
• A private cloud operates within an their licensing models to cloud computing, they create unique challenges due to their
enterprise datacenter or in an externally making it difficult for the enterprise to nature as remote, shared entities. These
hosted datacenter for the sole benefit of a ensure licensing compliance in a cloud include dependency on external suppliers
single enterprise. A private cloud is easier environment. for business-critical infrastructure — with an
to align with security, compliance, and associated loss of control — and the use of a
regulatory requirements, and provides
more enterprise control over deployment
and use.
• A hybrid cloud delivers IT through a mix of
both public and private clouds. Cloud End Users

The primary benefits of cloud computing


Cloud computing changes how applications
are defined, developed, deployed, scaled,
Software/Service
updated, maintained, and paid for, as well
Layer
as the infrastructure on which they run.
By decoupling application deployment from Platform Layer
the physical infrastructure, applications can
be rapidly deployed and scaled. As a result,
Infrastructure Layer
once a business need is identified, the time-
to-value of an application that is defined
to support this need can be significantly Network Layer
reduced.
IaaS PaaS SaaS
Challenges of transitioning enterprise Infrastructure as a Platform as Software as
computing to the cloud Service a Service a Service
While the benefits of cloud computing are
Operations
compelling, the path to the cloud is not
immediate, nor is it risk-free. To compute Time
on the cloud you need to transition your
organization and IT — applications, users, Figure 2. Different cloud types abstract different resources. Over time, organizations typically
staff, and operations — to the cloud. tend to adopt IaaS, followed by PaaS, and finally SaaS.
4 Kickstart Your Transition to the Cloud

shared environment, which includes potential The benefits of cloud computing are less Cloud deployment models
availability, latency, security, privacy, and pronounced where applications are constant In some cases, for technical, operational,
regulatory issues. in their resource demands, are not easy to or business reasons, a given application is
partition for dynamic provisioning, or do not concurrently deployed on traditional non-
Legal issues in the public cloud require a high level of scalability. In these cloud infrastructure and on a cloud, or on a
Data storage in the public cloud creates environments, the risk and cost associated hybrid private/public cloud. Several general
additional legal and regulatory challenges. with transitioning to the cloud can be more models for these types of deployment are
For example, information stored on a cloud difficult to justify. recognized:
should be considered encapsulated and
therefore immune from government access, The type of cloud that is most suitable for • Test and development — where the needs
unless appropriate court orders are obtained. a given enterprise — public, private, or of development, testing, and early stage
Unfortunately, there is concern that the public hybrid — and the service layers required — deployment benefit from low overhead,
cloud owner could grant government access infrastructure, platform, or software — often rapid provisioning, and the wide variety of
to the information without the knowledge or depend on the types of applications the software and hardware resources typically
consent of its owners. enterprise commonly uses. available on the cloud
• Functional off-load — where certain, well
In general, the legal issues of computing in Applications that should move to the cloud defined compute or storage functions are
the public cloud are still unclear and only Applications should move to the cloud based moved to the cloud, and other functions
time will tell if adequate solutions can be on the cost/benefit considerations of the are retained in non-cloud environments
found to alleviate the issues without creating move. Typically, it is easy to justify moving • Augmentation — where the public cloud
barriers to deployment. applications that can benefit from rapid is used to service peaks in demand in a
deployment, need a high level of elasticity, private datacenter
Industry-specific considerations and can scale easily. Applications that are not • Web services — where a well defined
The justifications, issues, and benefits of standards based, or that are dependent on service that is provided to many
transitioning to the cloud differ between software that is not supported on the cloud, applications can benefit from the elastic
industries and applications types. can be difficult to move. When transitioning nature of the cloud to service different
For example, in financial services, over- to the cloud, you can choose to replace levels of demand
provisioning is the most common strategy these difficult-to-transition applications or
used to deal with demand spikes, despite the to maintain them in a traditional, non-cloud Route to the cloud
high cost and inefficiency of this approach. environment. In any case, storage, backup, or Whether the target deployment is to a public
If the enterprise uses cloud computing, it networking can still be provided by an IaaS cloud, private cloud (in-house or hosted), or
can service demand peaks by allocating cloud to applications that cannot transition to hybrid, moving an enterprise’s IT to the cloud
datacenter capacity to handle them and, the cloud in full. is a complex task that requires fundamental
once the demand peak is over, the datacenter changes to many IT related processes. To help
capacity can be applied to other, lower If considering a move to a multitenant cloud, ensure a successful transition, the route to
priority work loads, thus driving up average whether public or private, applications that the cloud typically consists of the following
utilization. require security but cannot be secured, sequential stages, as illustrated in Figure 3.
cannot be moved. For an expanded discussion
Where large compute and storage farms of security on the cloud, see “Security on the When considering such a transition, it is
are needed to support highly scalable, cloud” on page 8. important to remember that cloud computing
dynamic workloads such as those typical is an evolution of current datacenter
of HPC applications or publicly facing Web practices, architectures, and technologies.
applications, the business justifications of Over the last few years, your organization
the cloud are immediate. In fact, many of the might have taken steps to rationalize your IT
technologies that underlie cloud computing and make it more efficient, for example, by
were developed to service these types of deploying your applications on virtualized
applications. servers. If this is the case, you have already
5 Kickstart Your Transition to the Cloud

taken the first steps in your transition, which The initial analysis identifies the extent of track, manage, and plan datacenter capacity.
makes it much simpler to fully transition to these challenges in the enterprise so that the The end result is that the datacenter as a
the cloud. following stages can focus on resolving the whole can reach operational and architectural
challenges in the course of the transition. maturity.
Analyzing the present state
Existing enterprise IT is often divided into Virtualizing, consolidating, and retiring Transitioning to the cloud
several organizational and technological equipment Finally, the last step in evolving the
silos. The fact that business units are usually On the cloud, virtual machines are the datacenter to the cloud can begin by
the owners of applications can result in an standard deployment object. Virtualization implementing the various components of the
environment where there is minimal sharing enables flexibility by abstracting the cloud infrastructure in phases, including:
of resources. This creates several issues and hardware. Software can be deployed without
challenges: depending on any specific hardware resource. • Physical resource virtualization
Once the applications are virtualized, • Self provisioning
• Widely diverging standards or proprietary the datacenter can be rationalized and • Programmatic control
interfaces — each business unit is free to consolidated at the infrastructure, platform, • Dynamic resource allocation
select its own technological components and application levels, and superfluous • Pay-per-use
• Minimal interaction between different equipment can be retired.
applications and minimal automatic External interfaces, often required to enable
information sharing — divergent Optimizing operations information and resource sharing between
development creates difficulties in Decoupling applications from hardware helps loosely coupled clouds, are implemented as
application integration enable facility and IT operations integration, part of the transition.
• Poor utilization — business units tends to infrastructure sharing, and improved
maintain their own, over-provisioned, spare automation. These in turn all contribute to
capacity optimizing resource usage and achieving
• Diverse operations and processes — the SLA targets. The metering capabilities of
needs of the business units differ and there cloud computing create extensive, high
is no entity within the enterprise that resolution usage data across all aspects of the
enforces common processes datacenter operations. In addition to enabling
pay-per-use, the data collected can be used to

Consolidation,
Optimization in
Silos Virtualization, and Cloud
Operations
Retirement

• Limited standards • Rationalization of applications, • Shared infrastructure • Virtualized physical


• Minimal interaction platform, and infrastructure • Automation resources
• Poor utilization • Improved efficiency • Operation maturity • Self provisioning
• Diverse operational • Workload compression • Architectural maturity • Programmatic control
models • Some sharing • Improved accuracy of • Rapid elasticity
• Retirement of some capacity management • Pay-per-use
applications

Figure 3. Organizations should evolve from a state of multiple, disjoint silos with their associated inefficiencies, through increasingly advanced
operational models to the cloud.
6 Kickstart Your Transition to the Cloud

Strategic planning • Enhanced business continuity and disaster requirements are examined and validated
While cloud computing focuses primarily on recovery capabilities and aspects of the current deployment that
solving the issues associated with enterprise • Efficiency of IT datacenter deployment might inhibit progress are identified, together
IT, it can deliver additional benefits by helping • Testing and handling of demand peaks with aspects that are likely to support it. The
to create an agile, adaptive enterprise. The • Integration with other organizations when set of validated requirements are assessed to
Sun Cloud Strategic Planning Service (Figure required by mergers and acquisitions identify critical success factors and perform a
4) helps you implement a strategic analysis gap analysis.
and leverage the opportunities created by the Sun’s cloud implementation methodology
move to the cloud. The strategic planning and To transition successfully to the cloud, you Synthesis
analysis phase is the first stage of Sun’s cloud need to implement a structured, multistaged The synthesis phase maps the requirements
services engagement. Sun cloud professionals approach to plan, control, and reduce the and target deployment models to appropriate
apply a set of industry best practices and risk of the transition. Sun’s proven SunScope architectural options. This information is then
evaluation techniques to analyze the current process (Figure 5) helps you transition to the used to design alternative solution options.
enterprise environment and identify cloud cloud through the following stages: The alternative solution options are then
computing opportunities. Each of the evaluated to help ensure they can meet the
elements listed in the following sections are • Discovery requirements and remedy the gaps, and the
evaluated in the context of the needs and • Synthesis target solutions are defined. Finally, solution
challenges of the enterprise, and the potential • Design deployment programs plans are created and
benefit to these elements that can be derived • Execute, realize prepared for the design phase.
from cloud computing. • Sustain

Business alignment Discovery


• Key business drivers and performance The discovery phase uses the insights gained
indicators in the strategic planning process to drill
• Enterprise economic environment and down into the enterprise IT. Initially, the
competitive landscape with a focus on the
areas where cloud computing can be used
for competitive advantage
• Opportunities to shift capital expenses to
operational expenses
nt Orga
• Regulatory, governance, and decision me niz
il gn at
support A
io
ss

n/

• IT service levels, expenses, and risk


ine

Cul
Bus

• Business readiness analysis


ture

Sun Cloud • Opportunities evaluation


Organizational considerations
Strategic Planning • Cloud roadmap
• Ways to help ensure responsible cloud use • Supporting plans and estimates
Service
• Processes and tools to improve decision • Financial attributes
ns

making
tio
Tec

• Alignment between different business units no


ra

pe
h

lo g
• Employee productivity, collaboration, and y IT O
innovation

IT technology and operations


• Service lifecycle management
• Alignment of IT with the needs of business
Figure 4. Cloud strategic planning integrates different aspects of the organization’s strategy
units and users
into a unified approach to cloud computing.
• Optimized use of power, space, and cooling
7 Kickstart Your Transition to the Cloud

Design to the actual transition, since the applications technologies, and operational models
The detailed design phase creates the designs are normally backward compatible with that can help resolve the inefficiencies of
for the target architectures as derived from traditional platforms. The deployment to enterprise IT. Cloud computing features
the synthesized program plans. Some of the cloud is implemented after application — elasticity, resource virtualization, self
the assumptions and designs might require changes are fully verified. provisioning, metering, multitenancy, and
confirmation — by implementing proofs-of- more — provide you with the tools you need
concept, benchmarks, or pilot deployments — Sustain to deploy IT services with unparalleled levels
to finalize the design of the different elements After successfully deploying the appropriate of efficiency. However, successfully adopting
and help ensure they match the requirements. elements of enterprise IT to the cloud, the cloud computing requires that you transform
The products of the design phase are concrete transition is complete and the organization your IT and implement fundamental
operational and engineering implementation moves its cloud operations into sustaining organizational, technological, and operational
plans. mode. In this stage, the enterprise changes.
implements the maintenance plans created
Execute, realize in the design phase, including the operational Sun has been supporting the adoption of
The execution phase begins by validating support structure. Now you can monitor the cloud computing in the enterprise, building
the plans and reviewing the expectations performance of your IT operations and the key cloud architectures, technologies for cloud
of the different stakeholders regarding the IT performance indicators, and validate the computing, and providing public cloud
implementation process. The transition attainment of your operational objectives. services for several years. Sun Professional
is executed with Sun’s standard project Services personnel have gained a wealth of
management methodologies, which maintain Kickstart your transition to the cloud with Sun experience in helping enterprises address
ongoing contact with stakeholders and Services the challenges of cloud computing. Sun’s
deliver planned milestones. The physical Enterprise IT is facing increasing pressure service offerings include strategic and tactical
systems are deployed in phases, with different to become more efficient. This pressure is analysis, evaluating the current environment
applications transitioning to the cloud driven by the difficult economic environment, and cloud opportunities, planning the
gradually to help ensure a smooth transition increased competition, and regulatory transition to the cloud, and managed services
with minimal disruption. It is important to pressure to control carbon emissions. The IT to support you in adopting and sustaining
remember that the applications themselves industry is responding to this challenge by cloud computing.
can be adapted to the cloud and tested prior developing new and innovative architectures,

Discovery Synthesis Design Execute and Realize Sustain

• Define and validate • Analyze requirements • Detailed design of • Validate implementation • Monitor and manage
requirements and architecture options candidate architectures plans and set solutions
• Identify client enablers and • Design solution options • Engineer solutions expectations • Monitor key performance
inhibitors • Evaluate solutions • Implementation indicators
• Define target state vision and • Create plans for • Monitor implementation • Publish IT health reports
success factors deployment and gap • Milestone checkpoints • Institutionalize IT
• Perform gap analysis remediation with stakeholders management policies

Key Results

Figure 5. Sun’s proven SunScope methodology helps you through the different stages of moving to the cloud.
8 Kickstart Your Transition to the Cloud

Security on the cloud process, and technology controls, a secure


A cursory examination of security on impl­ementation is essential to protect Learn More
the cloud can raise safety concerns for against these and other security risks.
For more on cloud computing
information that is processed and stored A more drastic measure is to host sensitive
technologies and services from Sun visit
there. Sharing hardware resources, applications in controlled areas that are
transporting sensitive data over public physically and logically separated from http://sun.com/service/cloud/
networks and storing it outside the other cloud tenants.
enterprise’s control, and entrusting
core business processing to external Another issue specific to the public cloud
organizations can all seem unsafe. However, is data transfers. There is some data that Sun’s comprehensive cloud value proposition,
closer examination reveals that while these normally does not leave the organization experience, and expertise makes it
concerns are valid, they can be resolved and over public networks. If you transfer sens­ uniquely suitable to advise you on your
the cloud can create opportunities for more itive data to the public cloud and store it cloud computing efforts. Sun can help you
secure computing environments. on shared resources, its vulnerability is transition from your current enterprise
increased. Strong encryption, and physical datacenter and hosted services mix to
When an enterprise encapsulates and logical containment techniques can be the cloud with a structured methodology,
applications within virtual machine images used to prevent disclosure. Alternatively, helping you to minimize risk. By leveraging
to deploy on the cloud, security measures the application can be distributed and the Sun’s effective, unique, and proven
can be enforced and documented for all of components of the application that process tools, methodologies, best practices, and
these applications. Each virtual machine the sensitive data can be deployed in the technologies, Sun Services can help you move
image can be secured and deployed any private datacenter. to cloud computing — call us today.
number of times on the cloud with an
assured level of security. When the image The essence of security on the cloud is
needs updating, it is quickly redeployed, fundamentally similar to security in a
speeding up the integration of security fixes traditional datacenter — whether shared
across the production environment. or private. When the enterprise implements
a comprehensive approach to security and
Multiple tenancy in the public cloud governance, a secure IT ecosystem can be Leverage Sun’s
creates real security concerns for the created that supports compliance objectives
enterprise. A multitenancy environment in traditional datacenters, private clouds, or best practices and
requires application developers to more
diligently protect against data leakage,
public clouds.
expertise to assess the
resource exhaustion, and inappropriate
administrative actions than in a private
Sun’s immense expertise enables it to
help you implement security on the cloud.
benefits, define the
environment. While these risks exist in Sun’s identity management technologies, strategy, and deploy
any environment, multitenancy combined including identification, authentication,
with elasticity and self-provisioning amplify authorization, accountability, integrity, to the cloud.
their potential impact. For example, confidentiality, privacy, non-repudiation,
auditing information must never be and availability are all immediately
allowed to remain on temporary storage applicable to the cloud — both public and
since a single physical system hosts any private. Sun cloud computing professionals
number of tenants over time. While these have the expertise to support you in
issues can be managed through policy, securely deploying your IT to the cloud.

Sun Microsystems, Inc. 4150 Network Circle, Santa Clara, CA 95054 USA Phone 1-650-960-1300 or 1-800-555-9SUN Web sun.com
© 2009 Sun Microsystems, Inc. All rights reserved. Sun, Sun Microsystems, and the Sun logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc., or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries. Information
subject to change without notice. SunWIN #568989 Lit. #SVSB15023-0 09/09

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