Cloud Services

Starter Guide
Taking a service-oriented approach
to IT infrastructure strategy.

Once you decide to adopt cloud or expand your reliance on

cloud infrastructure, how do you develop a strategic action plan?
More importantly, how do you effectively align IT and business goals?
Here you will find a quick guide to help frame the conversation with
your LOB partners and move forward.

Step 1:
Assess your service and application mix
For IT, the key task is twofold:
(1) correlating applications and workloads with infrastructure requirements, and
(2) assessing the corresponding business value.

Standard

Great for unpredictable demand

and low utilization

Productivity applications and non-core

workloads or applications used daily.

Lower level of data sensitivity

Standardized functionality

High utilization
and predictable demand

Strategic
Core applications and workloads
that create value for and differentiate
the business.

Core to business and critical to

customer satisfaction
Higher control over data
security to meet business and
regulatory compliance

Handles high variability in

demand and scale

Pilot
Applications and workloads that drive
innovation and create new opportunities
for the business.

Enables short development cycle

and renting capacity while
piloting initiatives
Provides easier path to sustain
initiatives and move to core
applications

Suggested
cloud model:
Public cloud

Suggested
cloud model:
Private or
hybrid cloud

Suggested
cloud model:
Private,
hybrid, or
public cloud

You can use the simple quadrant structure in Figure 1 to record your findings.
You now have a catalog of essential applications and services mapped to
database types and demand.

Figure 1. Map your applications and services to a visual framework.

Step 2:
Correlate services and applications with infrastructure
requirements and cloud models
Next, you can identify your infrastructure needs and determine the most costeffective and strategic way to meet them. Figure 2 shows the key characteristics
of each type of cloud model. Using the framework in Step 1, we see that private
cloud offers more control for core applications requiring predictable demand and
consistent high utilization for Strategic workloads, while public cloud provides the
flexible capacity and pay-as-you-go efficiencies for Standard workloads. A hybrid
cloud model gives your organization the best of both worldsand the flexibility to
adjust as you evolvethat is necessary for the unpredictable demands common
with Pilot workloads.

Figure 2. Map your assessment to infrastructure requirements and cloud models.

Step 3:
Support strategic growth and innovation
Now that you have a foundational map customized for your organization,
you are equipped with a planning tool for deploying new services on the right
type of cloud. New opportunities can be identified in collaboration with your
internal and external customers.

Your email is a
Standard workload
used for daily
communication.

Your marketing
manager wants to feature
email as the mainstay of
an automated program
gathering leads in a
secure database.

You move email into a

Strategic workload to
support increased
performance and
database requirements.

Figure 3. Your service-centric infrastructure supports growth and a clear path to cloud.

Intel Cloud Solutions

More than 90% of datacenter server infrastructuresincluding public cloud provider
infrastructuresare built on Intel processor-based platforms.1
Using Intel based cloud solutions and technologies can help you optimize cloud performance,
security, reliability, and manageability.

Planning Guides and Resources

Intel Hybrid Cloud 101 Brief >
Intel PaaS Drives Cloud Demand White Paper >
Intel Private Cloud Infrastructure-as-a-Service Planning Guide >
Intel How Offering Platform-as-a-Service Can Increase Cloud Adoption Planning Guide >
Access cloud planning guides and IT resources at: www.intel.com/cloud
Find cloud reference architectures at: www.intelcloudbuilders.com
Find a cloud provider at: www.intelcloudfinder.com

1. Source: IDC WW Server Tracker, 2014.

Copyright 2014, Intel Corporation. All rights reserved. Intel and the Intel logo are trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries.

* Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others.
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