February 2012

A Buyers Guide to Cloud Services

This extract is taken from White Paper 6 “A Buyers Guide to Cloud Services”. To download the full paper and others in the series go to http://www.cloudindustryforum.org/register-your-details-to-download-our-white-papers

Step one:

Be clear on your needs and constraints:

Whilst it sounds like it is stating the obvious, many first time users of Cloud Services face scenarios that they have never had to face before because everything they did was constrained to their internal IT capability and as such issues were handled as they arose. The devil is in the detail and as there is no universal cloud proposition it is essential that thought is given to what is and isn’t acceptable for the delivery of a Cloud solution. Making sure you are clear about what you are contracting for is the essential first step of any relationship with a Service Provider and therefore having a Requirements Document that details your specific needs will speed up and standardise answers from vendors if issued in the form of a Request for Information or Invitation to Tender.

As Cloud is all about distributed IT services it is a capability that has great potential to impact upon your wider business model. There are three areas of preparation which should be considered a guideline for groundwork in planning for Cloud adoption and which should be clearly thought through before you embark upon a selection process:

1.1 What is the scope of the solution you seek? 

a. What are the essential features you need from a solution? Do you have a requirements document that sets these out for an RFI to score potential suppliers? 
b. In which geographies will you need to access and support the solution? Does the supplier offer commercial and operational support in these regions on local time zones and in local language? 
c. What is your minimum and/or maximum term of a contract you are seeking to enter?
d. At what scale are you expecting to operate the solution (users or storage/processors etc)? 
e. How variable will that scale be? How much flexibility do you require in reducing capacity and at what intervals? Can you find a commercial model that is optimised to this requirement? 
f. How much of the solution do you want to be delivered to you as a service and which elements do you require to remain in control of? This will be a core influencer on the nature of the Service model that will be most appropriate.

1.2 What is the rationale behind the need for the new solution? 

Depending upon your internal justification for a new Cloud solution the issues that you will need to resolve will vary accordingly: 

a. New application/service: Where cloud is being considered for new application areas not currently operating within your organisation, key drivers tend to be around lack of internal skill set, pressure on resource vs time-to-market needs, lowering financial risk etc. In such a scenario you need to consider what level of service is required from your service provider to ensure you can achieve your objective. If you do not want to be concerned with set up and configuration a more SaaS style solution will meet your needs, whereas, if you have very specific needs, an IaaS solution or Private Cloud may be more appropriate. 
b. Cost containment: In main stream cloud adoption (i.e. after first experiences) cost reduction and containment tend to be the major driver for selecting this supply model. However, determining how costs are mitigated has a lot to do with the Deployment and Service Models you consider. By nature of their shared resources and generic capabilities, Public Cloud solutions and SaaS typically offer the lowest cost. However, even in large complex projects utilising Private Cloud (Deployment Model) or IaaS (Service Model), costs savings will arise through the consumption based pricing, mitigation of hardware and set up costs etc. Understanding your current cost base and setting a target for improvement will also be critical to ensure you can filter options meaningfully. 
c. Temporary Project: If your need is for a specific time banded initiative (such as a proof of concept, research project etc) or is used periodically (stop/start such as seasonal business, system testing and QA etc) then cloud offers a viable and scalable solution. In this scenario focusing on issues around the contract term, ability to scale and shrink, data load and migration are going to be more relevant to your decision making.

1.3 Do you have any fundamental constraints that need to be understood and complied with? 

There may be influencers on your cloud solution that are not related to technology per se but rather relate to the environment within which your organisation currently operates. For example: 

a. Regulation: Is your organisation required to comply with industry or functional regulation such as in the storage location and duration for data? (e.g. accounting, legal, healthcare). If so then understanding data location and protection will be a critical constraint, especially if the issue requires guarantees over geographic restriction of data. Such a constraint favours IaaS and Private Cloud. 
b. Legacy: Does the solution you seek to implement have any interaction with, or replace, any legacy systems and infrastructure? Depending upon the answer, then specific Deployment and Service models may not be workable if networking is required. If the solution is being moved from on-premise to the Cloud, then there may be restrictions around issues such as O/S support or data load that favour one model over another. 
c. Integration: Does the new solution need to be integrated with existing systems (e.g. a service management system that needs access to a CRM or Billing system to share customer data and workflow). If so this needs to be called out early on to determine if any SaaS solutions under review enable close integration. 
d. Connectivity: What bandwidth constraints exist for your business and does this have any implication to the nature of the application being sought?