Long Range Forecast: It’s getting Cloudy with Storms.

Last week I was discussing the merits of a Cloud based infrastructure with a prospect and he jokingly asked me for a “Long Term Weather Forecast”,  I thought it was a joke but it soon became apparent that some insight into the coming Years would help them choose their wardrobe for the coming seasons.  So in true Michael Fish tradition.

Private Secure Cloud – Enterprises will see through the Fog and embrace the “Private Cloud” and host ICT within their network and not at the edge of their network.  Be quick!  Hosting facilities are filling fast and some very good deals can be had.

Application Specific Clouds – You buy vertical applications for specific business need, so why can’t we do this with Cloud?  You can.  Subscribing to different vendors for Voice, Email, Storage and Security is the best world strategy but can prove complex.  Incidentally, this is a key benefit of Varidions HYDRA platform – Choice!

Self Service – Outsourcing an application to a Cloud provider doesn’t mean you lose control, however some providers have better management platforms than others.  The ability to control your applications and services via consoles and control panels is big business and as SaaS providers try to differentiate themselves, this is where the gaps will appear.

Quality of Service – Many early adopters cite “Internet Weather” as a major complaint of SaaS; when users complain of slow response from applications and erratic performance the Network and IT Manager is helpless as the problem is after their network but before the SaaS provider.  Varidions HYDRA leads the way in providing QoS based interconnects between Customers and SaaS providers.

Application Monitoring – you’ve subscribed to SaaS, your applications and services are in the Cloud and users are complaining.  You’re blind!  Understanding where your providers are meeting or exceeding their SLAs is critical to companies that are to embrace SaaS.  Not only that, what is the actual application performance users are getting?