Pipeline Publishing, Volume 7, Issue 1

	This Month's Issue:
	Into the Cloud

The Virtual Private Cloud

By Ittai Bareket

Cloud services are increasing the complexity of service provider offerings as well as presenting significant challenges for operational and business support systems. To effectively compete in this environment, service providers must not only innovatively position themselves and their services, but also ensure complete delivery of IT functions to their customers.

The delivery of cloud services often requires network services, computing infrastructure, applications and managed services to be bundled in customized ways. Because of their customized nature, designing these solutions typically requires many iterative steps, which not only results in longer sales cycles but also complicates implementation.

Automating the solution management process is essential to effectively and efficiently controlling the many variables involved in the design, sale and implementation of cloud services. Because today’s complex cloud deployment models require the careful integration of components such as storage and computing systems, MPLS networks, software applications and managed network services, automation ensures all activities are well coordinated and all components function as required. Without such automation, the following outcomes are common:

Collaboration among personnel who are proposing and delivering sophisticated solutions is difficult, time consuming and error prone.
Responding to customer-initiated requests (simple or complex) frequently requires one to three weeks.
Approximately 1/3 of solutions that are sold cannot be implemented as sold.

Additionally, by integrating solution management and fulfillment systems, service providers can significantly improve deployment efficiency as well as increase sales productivity. By better understanding and controlling the solution management lifecycle, service providers can compete more effectively within all types of cloud service offerings, including Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) offerings, which present the most complex challenges.

A Brief Overview of Cloud Service Models and Cloud Deployment Models

The three primary types of cloud service models are Software as a Service (SaaS),

Automating the solution management process is essential to controlling the variables in the design, sale and implementation of cloud services.

Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). With SaaS, enterprises use the provider’s applications running on a cloud infrastructure. These applications run the gamut and include all types of productivity, IT and business applications.

Utilizing the PaaS model involves deploying any consumer-created or acquired application onto the cloud infrastructure. Lastly, IaaS involves the provision of processing, storage, networks and other fundamental computing resources into the cloud. With IaaS, enterprises and users benefit from easy, on-demand access to required resources.

Complementing these three cloud service models are four common cloud deployment models:

Private Cloud – the cloud infrastructure is operated solely for an organization
Community Cloud – the cloud infrastructure is shared by several organizations and supports a specific community that has shared concerns
Public Cloud – the cloud infrastructure is made available to the general public or to a large industry group and is owned by an organization selling cloud services
Hybrid Cloud – the cloud infrastructure is a composition of two or more clouds (Private, Community or Public) that remain unique entities but are bound together and enable data and application portability

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