SoMoClo part 2: Cloud at the core

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Aberdeen believes that the concept of Social Mobile Cloud (SoMoClo) has several principles required to support the transformation to the new enterprise.

In this second article we build on the theme of the Cloud being the core of this new infrastructure, with mobility its edge, and social the connection between the mobile endpoints.

Public vs. Private Cloud
In research conducted in September 2012, Aberdeen found that 44 per cent of responding organisations are a hybrid environment between private and public Cloud.

Over a quarter (28 per cent) of respondents are using solely enterprise owned and operated computing infrastructure and a similar number are completely using platforms offered by a service provider based on shared resource models, public cloud.

IT organisations must decide which functions are clearly an enterprise strategic requirement and manage these in-house as a value-added service.

The remaining processes, which can be handled more efficiently by others, should be outsourced to Managed Service Providers. The right mix between private and public cloud will vary by enterprise, industry and company size.

The sourcing of the IT stack will vary between public and private Cloud offerings:

Data:
The volume of data enterprises manage is exploding, on average doubling every 2.5 years, as reported in Aberdeen's Storage Virtualization study.

 - Private Cloud: Enterprises should keep data within the confines of their own data centres if that data is business-critical, growing at a defined rate, and requires minimal latency accessibility.
 - Public Cloud: The main advantage of public Cloud for data accessibility is the ability to scale rapidly, without limitations, to meet the need for additional storage capacity.

Data Storage:
Choosing the right location for storing enterprise data is a key IT responsibility.

 - Private Cloud: In research published in March 2011, Aberdeen demonstrated that enterprises with the highest percentage of their in-house storage devices virtualised are able to deploy new applications 77 per cent faster and reduce application downtime by a quarter.
 - Public Cloud: An Aberdeen report publishing this month shows that companies with the highest percentage of their data stored in the Public Cloud have been able to reduce their overall cost of data storage the most.