Small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are leading the way to cloud services. In fact, SMBs represent two-thirds of the public cloud market, outpacing the growth of enterprise cloud adoption by about 10 points, according to a recent McKinsey report (“Outlook—Overcast and Bright: How the Cloud Is Transforming IT for SMEs,” McKinsey & Company, July 2011). Yet, many service providers (SPs) are wondering whether the rate of SMB cloud adoption makes it worthwhile to invest in cloud and managed services for SMBs. They are asking:
- Is now the time to invest in SMB-focused services?
- What do SMB customers want?
- How do SMBs want to consume cloud services?
SMB Cloud Watch is ongoing research from the Cisco Internet Business Solutions Group (IBSG) designed to answer these questions. Here are some highlights of our most recent findings: Read More »
Tags: Cisco, cloud, Cloud Computing, cloud services, IaaS, IBSG, infrastructure as a service, managed services, research, SaaS, Service Provider, small and medium-sized businesses, small medium business, SMB Cloud Watch, SMBs, software as a service, SP
With our local Giants baseball team doing so well Monday night in their journey to clinching the World Series title, I was reminded of the sports maxim of ‘Following through’. Whether it’s with a baseball bat swing, a basketball shot, or a kicking a soccer ball, a follow through is important to take what you started, taking your task through the motion, and setting yourself up for future success. We at Cisco would like to help you follow through with your goal of transforming your infrastructure into a flexible service delivery center and see you symbolically smiling from that winner’s podium raising that trophy.
Part of our strategy for enabling your success is providing validated design guides to deploying our next-generation infrastructure, including the Unified Computing System and Nexus switching family, to speed your journey to the Cloud market while simplifying the transition. We’ve tested these architectures inside our own data centers, with partners, and in customer field trials and have captured and documented best practices around what works (and what doesn’t) in live deployments. As always, these architectures are positioned within our solution frameworks, Unified Service Delivery for Service Providers and Data Center Business Advantage for Enterprises, and we are committed to delivering more value to these Cisco designs.
We publically released a validated design around the Virtualized Multi-Tenant Data Center (VMDC), which allows for the complete end-to-end Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) management of your data center resources across compute, network, and storage. Recent developments include expanded scaling ability which extends support from hundreds to tens of thousands of virtual machines within a single data center. We believe this abstraction of raw resources is an important baseline for extending into the delivery of future applications and services while leveraging a common infrastructure.
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Tags: data center, IaaS, infrastructure as a service, Service Provider, unified service delivery, validated design, virtualized multi-tenant data center, VMDC
Take advantage of the cloud while minimizing the risks
I’ve heard some small business owners refer to concerns about reliability in cloud computing.I think it’s important that you understand these risks and limit them as best you can.
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Tags: business advice, Cloud Computing, infrastructure as a service, small business, software as a service
Small businesses can reap many benefits from cloud computing
Does your company use Microsoft Exchange Online? Do you have a Google Mail account? Have you ever used WebEx to set up a conference call or an online meeting? If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, you’re using cloud computing.
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Tags: Cloud Computing, infrastructure as a service, small business, software as a service
