PaaS management of key applications – SaaS’s cousin, platform as a service (PaaS) solution liberate the deployment of applications from the details of the underlying hardware, software and provisioning capabilities, and support the complete lifecycle of building and delivering Web applications and services in the cloud. PaaS systems also simplify the deployment, scaling and management of multi-tier applications, and can provide a multi-tenant environment, or deploy new servers and install and configure software for an entire application blueprint.
That’s the easy part
All of the above systems are mutually dependent and have to be able to interact smoothly and dynamically together to produce a fully functional private cloud environment.
For most IT departments, that’s the easy part. There are some new terms in that group, but for the most part, the focus is all on technology. The hard part is learning how to get the IT department working smoothly and dynamically with the business units they serve.
The true potential of cloud technology can only be realized by tightly aligning technology with business objectives. This is less familiar territory for IT and requires skills in things like business process analysis and a willingness to sit down with non-techies and genuinely understand what they do and how cloud technology can not only help them do it better.
IT can’t take this step alone. The next time your CEO and CFO ask when you’re going to have cloud computing implemented, ask them to tell you exactly what they mean by that. Like the underlying technology, the potential of cloud computing can only be realized when the entire organization, from the top down, is working efficiently together.
Our next article in this six-part series — Get Off My Cloud: Ensuring Security for your Private Cloud — will look at security considerations in your private cloud.
If you landed on this page and click here to read the first article in this series: Mixed Emotions: A Cloud of Your Own.
Mike Martin is vice president, cloud solution group for Logicalis, an international provider of integrated information and communications technology solutions and services and is responsible for developing and taking to market the cloud computing strategy for Logicalis. Prior to joining Logicalis in 2006, Mr. Martin spent 10 years at IBM, where he worked in various consultant and sales roles focusing on consolidation and virtualization technologies.