Why are Enterprises moving to the cloud?
- To reduce costs
- To convert CAPEX to OPEX costs
- For the "pay as you go" model
- For elastic scalability
- For speed to deployment
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) is a model for provisioning hardware (compute, storage, networking, etc...) to the end user where management of the underlying fabric is controlled by the provider, but the end user maintains control of the operating system and applications installed within. This system usually includes a metered-by use cost model and allows the end user to expand/contract their use of the infrastructure as needed, usually via self-service portals. Examples include: Rackspace, Amazon EC2, Terremark, and private clouds deployed/managed by IT as service to business units (internal IT's end-customers).
Platform as a Service (PaaS) is a model for delivering complete development platforms as a cloud service. PaaS offerings facilitate development, testing, deployment and on-going maintenance of applications without the cost of buying the underlying infrastructure and software environments. Examples include: Microsoft Azure Platform, Google App Engine, VMforce.com
Software as a Service (SaaS) is a model where an application is delivered over the Internet and customers pay on a per-use basis. It is the most common form of cloud computing delivered today. Examples include: Salesforce.com, Hosted Exchange, Microsoft 365, etc.
The building blocks of a cloud infrastructure include:
Consolidated hardware to minimize power, cooling and space as well as underlying managed components. This is where consolidated infrastructure plays a key role.
With the second building block we layer on virtualization to maximize utilization of the underlying hardware while providing logical separation for individual applications.
If we stop at this point we have what most of today's data centers are using to some extent or moving to. This is a virtualized data center. Without the next two layers we do not have a cloud/utility computing model. The next two building blocks provide the real operational flexibility and organizational benefits of a cloud model.
To move out virtualized data center to a cloud architecture we next layer on Automation and Monitoring. This block provides the management and reporting functionality for the underlying architecture. It could include: monitoring systems, troubleshooting tools, chargeback software, hardware provisioning components, etc.
Next we add a provisioning portal to allow the end-users or IT staff to provision new applications, decommission systems no longer in use, and add/remove capacity from a single tool. Depending on the level of automation in place below some things like capacity management may be handled without user/staff intervention.
The last building block is security. While many private cloud discussions leave security out, or minimize its importance it is actually a key component of any cloud design. When moving to private cloud customers are typically building a new compute environment, or totally redesigning an existing environment. This is the key time to design robust security in from end-to-end because you're not tied to previous mistakes (we all make them)or legacy design. Security should be part of the initial discussion for each layer of the private cloud architecture and the solution as a whole.
- Protect application and data integrity
- Optimize application availability and performance
- Support business continuity
- Transport data needed for disaster recovery
- Support data center demands for emerging service-oriented architectures, virtualization, and cloud computing technologies.
- Protect critical applications and confidential data
- Enhance data center operational efficiencies
- Minimize space, power, and cooling requirements
- Reduce your networking total cost of ownership (TCO)
- Create new, secure application environments to support new business processes
For a highly scalable, resilient, and secure data center network foundation, contact the experts at EVT who can design a simplified network architecture that requires fewer platforms and network layers-which simultaneously offers reduced network complexity, streamlined network management, and reduced power/cooling needs. And with robust security appliances and flexible embedded security, your company will be free to deploy the technologies that best support your business goals.
For more information on how EVT can help you with your network needs contact the networking experts at EVT by emailing info@evtcorp.com
Staffing effectively is complex and meeting your IT staffing challenges can be a time consuming and costly process.
Candidate pools have grown rapidly, but one specific candidate doesn't necessarily fit every environment. Costs and complexity sometimes increases as finding the ideal candidate to meet your specific business needs is challenging. Effectively recruiting and retaining resources has become more costly - especially if you have a demanding environment, limited human resources, or are unable to effectively manage and receive the best value out of your team.
That's why organizations turn to EVT. We can help. From analyzing your current environment and business needs, to developing an effective and comprehensive team. EVT can find a candidate that best suits your needs.
Through a staffing assessment, EVT Professional Services experts can identify requirements and needs based on your environment, matching the value and performance of the candidate, to your service levels.
We have staffed many companies in different fields and our staffing assessment is detailed and designed to find the essential people needed to ensure the success of your business.
To properly staff for your specific needs, we develop a complete understanding of the current business and goals for your IT enterprise. Through this comprehensive method, we provide ideal candidates that will help your company realize its business objectives and potential.
Our staffing assessment also addresses the strategic and tactical issues challenging your IT organization today and the future. All aspects of your team and environment must compliment and rely on one another in order for your business to succeed. EVT can be your competitive advantage in assembling a high performance team and closing the gaps with the right people.
Understand your infrastructure and business, including:
- IT requirements
- Business needs
- Current staff
- Future Direction
- Identifying top technical professionals
- Salary, location, availability
- Effort to recruit and retain
- Our network of IT professionals
- Referral based sourcing
- Screened qualification process
- Vetting of candidates
- A fully-vetted shortlist of top professionals
- Selectivity, speed, and effectiveness in augmenting your team
- A fully-vetted shortlist of top professionals
- Confidence that your IT organization has the necessary skill sets to accomplish your business objectives
Despite the clear benefits, the idea of switching to a virtualized infrastructure still gives pause to even some of the most educated CIOs. Although some confusion related to new technology or vendor choices might be expected, many companies hesitate to implement the physical-to-virtual transition because of security concerns, performance uncertainty and scalability questions-which are all valid reasons to be apprehensive.
At Enterprise Vision Technologies (EVT), we've followed the development of virtualization technology since its inception. We know how it works, how to use it, and where it likely will evolve in the future. Our technical experts can help you identify your scope and overall business objectives, and then design a virtualization solution that will make the most of your resources. To learn what you can achieve with virtualization technology, contact us at info@evtcorp.com.
- Increased utilization of physical servers
- Lower power/cooling requirements
- Greater ROI
- Faster business innovation
- Easier business continuity and disaster recovery
- Better application performance
With numerous storage implementations under our belt for a wide range of organizations , EVT has the knowledge and skills to build and maintain a storage infrastructure that will safeguard your data today-and in the future.
- SAN (fiber channel, FCoE, and iSCSI), NAS (NFS and CIFS) Storage
- Archival Storage Solutions
- Storage Consolidation Solutions
- Storage Resource Management
- Cloud Storage solutions
- Data Migration Services
Reliance on IT has increased to a point where most organization could not function without the services IT provides. Business continuity and disaster recovery are critical capabilities needed to comply with ever increasing legal and regulatory requirements, and to ensure your organization can continue to function regardless what might happen. More and more, organizations are fully expected to be able to continue operations in the event of a disaster, regardless of the cause.
The expectations of continual operations must align with true business and organizational requirements. We help you assess and understand the true impact of an outage to define the service levels needed to meet requirements, and provide a business case to justify disaster recovery actions. We identify the gap between current state and required capabilities and devise the strategies to address this gap. FlexITy helps you develop business continuity and disaster recovery strategies based on a holistic view of IT and the business. By aligning with and leveraging key initiatives and opportunities within your organization, we are able to maximize the use of existing resources and minimize cost.
Many of the trends, tools and technologies prevalent today provide excellent opportunities for continual operations and disaster recovery initiatives. For example, server consolidation and virtualization, storage consolidation and virtualization, data deduplication, archiving, virtual tape, automation, and implementing service level management all present opportunities to advance business continuity and disaster recovery capabilities through proper strategic planning and business justification. FlexITy will provide our technical and strategic expertise to drive our standards and best practices based methodologies to achieve the right solutions for your organization. For more information on how EVT can help you with your BC and DR needs contact us at info@evtcorp.com