Choose Your IaaS Platform Wisely

The debate about whether or not to deploy cloud technology is over. Having a cloud strategy is now a business imperative: 94 percent of organizations are either experimenting with or have moved into production with cloud deployments. Furthermore, there is an emerging consensus that the optimum approach is a mix of public and private clouds, in other words, a hybrid cloud architecture. In a recent survey, 70% of enterprises said that hybrid cloud is very important or critical to the organization’s success.

A true hybrid cloud architecture is more than just private cloud + public cloud. Simply “bolting on” a public cloud to your infrastructure may not do you any good unless the public cloud is fully integrated with your existing private cloud. Otherwise, workloads are essentially “trapped” in the service provider’s environment and are difficult to move back into your private cloud when business requirements change. Realizing the full value of a hybrid model requires the ability to migrate workloads seamlessly from private cloud to public cloud and back again.

While interoperability is always in your best interest, many service providers don’t see it that way: In fact, some make it downright painful to move workloads between environments. Your best defense against this form of lock-in lies in how you architect your private cloud, specifically, the infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) platform upon which it is built. When choosing an IaaS offering for your private cloud, it’s important to select a solution that can work with multiple public cloud providers. Therefore, regardless of your cloud strategy, choosing the right IaaS is the key to success. This paper is intended to help you decide which IaaS can best help you achieve your organization’s strategic goals.