We invited Mike Taylor, Vice President of global infrastructure engineering and operations at Savvis, to provide his insight on Savvis’ journey to the cloud. Read below for what he has to say. Check out related blog for an additional perspective.

If you’ve been following the cloud services market, you’ve likely heard the term “enterprise cloud” proclaimed by various vendors. But really, what does that mean? How do you differentiate an enterprise cloud from a mass market option?

At Savvis, a CenturyLink company, we love talking about our enterprise cloud offerings and what distinguishes them from the mass market clouds that continue to flood the marketplace.

First, let me be clear: In some areas, enterprise and mass market clouds are the same. Benefits for both include flexibility, quick provisioning of compute power and a virtualized and scalable environment. However, it’s important to note that enterprise clouds also provide a range of security options, unprecedented speed-to-market and vastly improved collaboration between the end-user and the vendor.

Savvis’ enterprise cloud is a VMware-based service differentiated by an array of built-in security features, as well as many optional managed security capabilities. Savvis built its cloud solutions using the same trusted suppliers – including Cisco – used by enterprise customers in their own data centers. Our cloud services are divided into tiers, providing different levels of performance and availability for different types of application needs. These services are delivered in a multitenant way and can also be delivered as a single tenant.

So how do you realize the promise of enterprise cloud infrastructure? My colleague Steve Garrou, vice president of global solutions management at Savvis, recently shared on the Savvis blog a list of items that should be addressed when considering a move to enterprise cloud. Rather than reinvent the wheel, here are the items that Steve outlined:

Decide whether you are going to maintain two infrastructures or consolidate.

1. Understand what applications are currently running in the existing environment and expectations for moving certain solutions to the cloud.
2. Analyze the architecture of the application environments.
3. Determine how much capacity you need to run the applications; are the capacity requirements seasonal or variable?
4. Assess compliance and security requirements.

Years ago – before “enterprise cloud” was common terminology – Cisco and Savvis shared a vision for a cloud service that offered enterprise-required services, not simply compute virtualization. That vision became reality two years ago when we launched Savvis Symphony Virtual Private Data Center, one of the industry’s first enterprise-class, multi-tenet cloud solutions. A key element of the cloud architecture was the Cisco Unified Computing System.

Partnering with trusted companies like Cisco helps Savvis set the bar for enterprise cloud. I recently sat down with Cisco to talk about our collaboration. You can see the results of those conversations in the case study and video.

Tags: Cisco, cloud, datacenter, savvis

When I meet with customers and analysts, I’m often asked about Cisco’s Cloud Computing strategy. Many of us have written about it before, including Lew Tucker (Cisco Cloud CTO) and other executive leaders. While we talk about technology innovation, an open ecosystem of partners and driving new ways for customers to solve business problems, there is a key element that is sometimes overlooked. That element is Cisco’s stated direction NOT to compete with our customers (service providers or systems integrators), instead focusing on delivering the critical infrastructure (hardware and software) for building private, public, hybrid and community clouds.

While many of our partners agree with this approach [1][2], some of our competitors do not. Fair enough, everyone needs to figure out their own business models. One of the byproducts of our strategy is that we’re able to take the learnings from certain market segments and quickly apply them to other market segments. We’re not restricted in trying to put together the best possible solutions for our customers. In fact, we’ve created Cloud Builder programs to encourage our Channel Partners and Services Providers to work more closely together to solve customer needs. Read More »

Tags: automation, Cisco Nexus, Cisco UCS, Cloud Computing, cloud strategy, innovation, lew tucker, savvis, Terremark

Heads up, I’ll be moderating a webinar session this Tuesday, Dec. 7, at 8:00 a.m. PST where we will go over findings that Cisco’s IBSG consulting group completed recently on cloud computing. The results of the survey are useful for both Service Provider and Enterprise organizations. In the webinar, we’ll have distinguished speakers from Savvis (Brian Klingbeil, General Manager, Hosting), Valogix (Mark Yablonski, CTO), and Cisco (Scott Puopolo, VP, Cisco Internet Business Solutions Group). Based on feedback from IT decision makers, we will have an honest discussion on growing trends, concerns and implications of cloud computing, and the next steps towards success.

The main points on our agenda include:

• Why cloud computing is a compelling economic proposition for enterprises
• How quickly enterprises plan to migrate to the cloud
• Which applications will be first in line for cloud migration -- and why
• Who will be the most trusted providers of cloud services
• What opportunities cloud computing opens for service providers

Read More »

Tags: cloud, Cloud Computing, cloud services, IBSG, savvis, service delivery, Service Provider, unified service delivery, valogix