Businesses are deploying private clouds to increase agility and reduce costs. But they are also steadily increasing workloads being run in public clouds, in order to meet the dynamic business needs. Read more to understand how IT teams are transforming into cloud brokers, acting as intermediaries between their companies and cloud service providers.

1. Hybrid Cloud Requires a
Transition from IT Service
Builder to IT Service Broker
deployed within 18 months. They also expect that the use of
all cloud models (public, private and hybrid) will increase at
their organizations over the next 18 months.
Respondents further report that nearly one-third of their
total data will be deployed to either public or hybrid clouds
within 18 months, a precipitous 100 percent increase over the
amount of data they say is currently being housed in either a
public or hybrid cloud. Not surprisingly, a majority of respon-dents
plan to employ public cloud platforms based on VMware
or Microsoft technology with a smaller but growing number
opting for hyperscale and open source cloud alternatives.
Turning to benefits, the study, which was commissioned
by NetApp and conducted by IDG Research Services, reveals
that more than two-thirds of respondents report their orga-nizations
have seen reduced provisioning times, increased
efficiencies and lower costs, which they directly attribute to
cloud deployments.
Hybrid Clouds, Serious Challenges
Moving from managing existing internal private clouds to
integrating with public clouds is not a simple process. As
noted by ESG Senior Analyst Wayne Pauley, “There are some
organizational and governance changes which have to occur
on the business side of the house. If the organization is going
from a fixed and very static allocation scheme to a more
dynamic usage model, they have to come up with ways of
forecasting consumption and being accountable for serving
large numbers of people across their distributed enterprises.”
From an IT point of view, the challenges are significant as
well. Traditionally, senior IT leaders in the data center have
maintained control over their data, period. However, certain
key functions pose a challenge to that—migrating that data to
the public cloud, shifting it to and from the cloud, and adapting
to new tasks such as changing cloud providers on the fly.
The majority of respondents consider it highly important
to offer consistent SLAs across cloud environments (83
Executive Summary
Even as enterprise IT shops are deploying private clouds
to increase agility and reduce costs, they are also steadily
increasing the number of workloads being run in public
clouds to meet the ongoing, dynamic needs of the busi-ness.
Whether they realize it or not, they are transforming
into cloud brokers who act as intermediaries between their
companies and cloud service providers—managing work-loads
and moving data among multiple clouds.
These newly created cloud brokers find themselves
managing across private clouds within their own data
centers, among hyperscale cloud providers like Amazon
(AWS), Google and Microsoft, and across large public cloud
service providers such as AT&T, Orange Business Services
and Verizon. Their companies benefit because the competi-tion
among these market-leading companies is creating a
broad range of new options and price points for the delivery
of IT services.
However, this is a challenging and rapidly evolving environ-ment
that requires the cloud brokers to bring extensive IT
experience, cloud knowledge and well-honed negotiating
skills to the table when they hammer out deals that include
such major issues as data control and management, consis-tent
SLAs, governance and security.
Global Survey Confirms Hybrid IT
is the New Normal
According to a worldwide survey of IT executive members
from CIO LinkedIn Forum, respondents’ organizations are
already deploying multiple cloud models, and expect that
more than half of all IT services at their organizations will be
delivered via cloud three years from now.
For example, the majority of respondents expect to have
Software as a Service (SaaS), Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
and Platform as a Service (PaaS) deployed within three years,
while more than two-thirds (71 percent) expect IaaS will be
CIO LinkedIn
Forum
white paper

2. 2 white paper: Hy brid C louds
Figure 1.
Ways in Which Organizations Have Benefitted from Cloud Deployments To-Date
Reduction in provisioning times/
increase IT efficiencies/lower costs
Scale-up/scale-down to
accommodate business needs
Able to buy and use resources
on a per-need basis
Less downtime/planned outages
Improved SLAs
More reliable security
Drive revenue
percent), and to manage and control data among multiple
private and public cloud resources (82 percent). However,
more than three-quarters indicate that their organizations are
encountering challenges in meeting these objectives.
Seventy-eight percent consider it highly important to
be able to manage data seamlessly across multiple cloud
environments. Data protection and data governance are
most often cited as the aspects of control and management
that will be difficult to maintain when moving to a hybrid
cloud environment.
Just 40 percent of respondents rate their organizations’
current ability to move data across cloud environments as
excellent or very good. Alarmingly, roughly the same propor-tion
has a high confidence level that their organizations will
be able to master this critical capability 18 months from now.
CIO Concerns
According to Brad Nisbet, Marketing Manager, Cloud Solu-tions
for NetApp, “What CIOs really want is the ability to
choose among cloud services, knowing that, for whatever
reason—change in business needs, policies, location, etc.—
they can make adjustments with minimal pain and impact
to the business.” Their issues include:
n Minimizing downtime with fewer planned outages
n Having the flexibility to buy and consume resources
on a per-need basis
n Allowing users to react to changing business needs
by scaling IT resources up and down
n Achieving cost reduction and faster provisioning times
An overarching concern, and a key to resolving these
issues, is maintaining control over data performance,
protection, governance and security—which is particu-larly
challenging in heterogeneous cloud environments.
Complexity is another inhibitor for CIOs who are consid-ering
a tighter integration of public cloud services into their
IT environments. For example, many organizations are
perplexed about how to manage elements of IT across a
blend of private and public cloud resources, especially the
intricacies of managing data across disparate locations and
platforms in a hybrid environment.
The Need for a Common Data Platform
Hybrid cloud environments can lead to some very innovative
combinations of resources. To achieve the IT agility promised
by a hybrid model, however, it must be possible to adjust
the mix of cloud services and service providers in response
to changing business needs. At the compute layer, a high
degree of agility and portability can already be achieved
by using server virtualization technology and applications
designed for stateless, cloud-based computing. At the data
layer, it’s a different story.
Once user data or application data is generated, the IT
organization is bound to manage, protect and control that
data, regardless of its location. When data is moved between
different clouds, the challenge is to do so efficiently while
maintaining the desired policies for data security, perfor-mance
and data protection. Indeed, it is this burden of data
management and control that has become the primary
Source: IDG Research Services, October 2013
67%
59%
52%
47%
35%
22%
16%

3. 3 white paper: Hy brid C louds
Figure 2.
Importance of IT Controls for Hybrid Cloud
2%
2%
55% 11% 4%
6%
of brokering services between private and public cloud
resources—storage and data management—with a platform
that offers a common data format and familiar management
between resources.
➋ Dynamic Data Portability
The second pillar of the strategy is Dynamic Data Portability,
which provides the ability to move data between instances
of Data ONTAP via the company’s replication and data move-ment
technology. By providing this capability between cloud
resources, users can create innovative cloud solutions and
avoid vendor or cloud-provider lock-in.
➌ Extensive Customer Choice
The third pillar is Extensive Customer Choice, which focuses
on best-of-breed technologies and a broad ecosystem of
cloud providers. In this area, NetApp provides a multitude of
options for IT organizations looking to deploy a multi-cloud
environment. NetApp technology options for private clouds
span all major virtualization frameworks, such as those from
VMware, Microsoft and Citrix, and virtually all of the major
cloud management options, such as those from Cisco, BMC
and CA, as well as open source initiatives like OpenStack and
CloudStack. On the public cloud side, NetApp enables over
175 cloud service providers with infrastructure and solutions
built on Data ONTAP. In addition, NetApp’s partnership with
Amazon Web Services allows organizations the benefit of
Offer consistent SLAs and services across
both public and private environments
Manage and control data among multiple
private and public cloud resources
Control data growth in the cloud and the
associated storage and network service fees
Easily move data among different
cloud providers
Leverage legacy on-premise systems
as part of a hybrid cloud
Switch between cloud service
providers as needed
obstacle to more effective utilization of the public cloud.
The ability to seamlessly manage data in a hybrid cloud
environment can provide IT organizations with new degrees
of freedom for balancing and fine-tuning data services
across cloud resources. Just as operations teams already
benefit from managing virtual machines in the same way
across both private and public clouds, having a common
set of storage services will enable them to more effectively
provision resources and manage data across multiple
cloud environments.
The Data ONTAP storage operating system from NetApp
is designed to provide that common data platform and
serve as the data management foundation for a hybrid
cloud environment.
The Three Pillars of the NetApp
Cloud Strategy
➊ Universal Data Platform
NetApp’s Data ONTAP storage operating system is at the
heart of the company’s Universal Data Platform, which is
one of three main pillars supporting a multi-cloud strategy.
As part of its plan to create a standardized data fabric that
homogenizes on-and off-premises connectivity, NetApp
has enhanced Data ONTAP and is working closely with its
cloud provider partners to deploy the operating system
across hybrid cloud environments. With Data ONTAP, orga-nizations
can solve one of the more complicated aspect
28%
34%
13%
11% 5%
5%
18%
16%
11%
43%
43% 29% 11% 6%
3%
10%
29% 9%
48%
55% 21%
42% 22% 8%
Critical Very important Somewhat important
Not very important Other
Source: IDG Research Services, October 2013

4. hyperscale cloud flexibility and economics while preserving
tight control over sensitive data.
ESG’s Pauley praises NetApp Data ONTAP for its ability
to move data seamlessly between on- and off-premises
locations. “That takes a lot of the hard work out,” he says.
“Everything that they do has been very easy for infrastructure
and operations people to deal with and manage. That’s the
beauty of NetApp. There’s a lot of simplicity built in, which is
very hard to do.”
Adds Bill Tohtz, Chief Architect at technology service
provider Sayers Inc., “NetApp’s vision enables seamless
cloud management across any blend of public and private
cloud resources. Through our partnership with NetApp,
we’re able to help organizations respond instantly to ever-changing
demands while enhancing IT services with flexible
and agile solutions.”
Start Preparing Today for a
Hybrid Cloud Future
As cloud environments increasingly evolve into a blend of
different types with multiple vendors, the role of IT as a cloud
broker will continue to grow in importance. This means that
IT’s purpose, more than ever, is to align with the business and
become a trusted advisor. IT must learn to hide the complexi-ties
of hybrid clouds from business users while supporting
an agile, best-of-breed approach that optimizes their invest-ments
in both private and public cloud resources.
In the rapidly evolving world of cloud computing, there are
many opportunities to demonstrate leadership by developing
a roadmap that employs advanced cloud infrastructures
to support business objectives and carve out competitive
advantage. The first phase in this process includes assessing
your short- and long-term IT goals. In the next phase, a cloud
broker must evaluate competing cloud offerings to deter-mine
which services are compatible with user requirements,
including such important criteria as performance, SLAs and
governance. The third phase entails interviewing potential
cloud providers, checking customer references and negoti-ating
business terms.
Of course, this is an iterative process that will need to be
repeated as needs evolve and new options become avail-able.
The payoff will be a more agile IT organization that is
well-positioned to hike the performance of the business to
unprecedented levels. ■
4 white paper: Hy brid C louds
“What CIOs really want is the
ability to choose among cloud
services, knowing that, for what-ever
reason—change in business
needs, policies, location, etc.—
they can make adjustments
with minimal pain and impact
to the business.”
—Brad Nisbet, Marketing Manager
Cloud Solutions, NetApp
To learn more, visit us at www.netapp.com/cloud
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