As an organisation looks to making a journey to the cloud, there are several options available today to aid this transition. Some of the available options include;

1.     Use one of the public cloud services from Amazon, MS Azure & Google;

 OR

 2.    Build a private cloud where they can decide to operate in- house, or use a managed services provider;

 OR

 3.    Hybrid private & public cloud. Build the cloud infrastructure on-premise then use the public cloud for replication of workloads, disaster recovery and burst-out capacity needs;

 OR

 4.    Join or start a community cloud. A community cloud is a group of industry-common organizations agreeing on a model to sharing and accounting for consumption of virtual computing resources.

 

Often one solution does not suit the whole organisation for all workloads and companies often may adopt a particular cloud model for a particular function or project depending on the specific requirements on cost, speed or compliance.


1. Public Cloud

Public Cloud

Is a public cloud right for you?

If you can tick most of these boxes, the Public Cloud may be your best option!

Speed

Your project needs to get up and running in under six months

Your project has a short-term lifecycle making a rent-now option attractive to building it  

 

Budget

There’s no Capex budget available for this project

There’s Opex budget available for this project

Resources

Your technical team is very small

Your technical team doesn’t have a lot of virtualization or cloud experience

You struggle to hire developers and sysadmins with cloud skills

Demand

Demand for your cloud application is likely to be unpredictable

Demand for your cloud application or service will experience peaks & troughs

Your current IT infrastructure will struggle to handle the workloads

Privacy & Compliance

You are happy to host your applications and data in a 3rd party data centre

You are comfortable making your applications & data accessible via the internet


TOP TIP: A public cloud model may seem more cost-effective than a private cloud at first but beware of ‘image sprawl.’ Licensing for VMs in the cloud may see your public cloud costs spiral very quickly. It is recommended that organisations consider on-demand services initially and use open source OSs instead.


2. Private Cloud

P 

Private cloud

Is a private cloud right for you?

If you can tick most of these options below, a private cloud may suit!

Speed

You have the time to build an internal private cloud first before deploying your apps

You already have the cloud infrastructure available                  

Your project has a med-long term lifecycle, so building seems attractive to renting

Budget 

There is Capex or Opex budget to build the private cloud infrastructure

There is a Opex budget available to operate & manage the cloud infrastructure

Resources

You have a good sized in-house technical team                                  

Your technical team has virtualization or cloud experience      

You have a budget to hire developers & sysadmins with cloud skills

Demand

Your cloud infrastructure will be able to handle demand even during high peaks

Privacy & Compliance

Your project involves sensitive data subject to data & privacy laws

Your data & apps must be hosted on premise or at an approved dc in country

Your SLA / IT governance policies specify that the data will be hosted by you


TOP TIP: Even though there is time and budget to build the private cloud, you will require expertise in-house to operate and maintain it. Consider managed services from companies such as Canonical and if you onboard cloud operation expertise, or, are willing to gain organisational knowledge, consider Red Hat or openQRM, they all use OpenStack! We bring together a range of Infrastructure as a Service platforms which you can test-drive with us at no costs to yourselves. Contact us today on cloud@mjenzi.com for a more specific discussion.

 

  3. Hybrid Cloud

Hybrid cloud

Is a hybrid cloud right for you?

If you can tick most of these options, a hybrid cloud model may suit you best!

Speed

You have built a private cloud 

                                  

Budget

There is an Opex budget to operate your private cloud infrastructure

There is an Opex budget to rent / consume 3rd party resources as needed on demand 

Resources

You have an internal cloud that is ready to use

Your technical team has virtualization or cloud experience

  

You have a budget to hire developers & sysadmins with cloud skills 

Demand

Your in-house cloud may not be able to handle high peaks of user demand  

Business requires a higher level of service availability by replicating workloads

Privacy & Compliance

Your project involves non-sensitive data 


TOP TIP: Interoperability between cloud is critical in a hybrid setting. Any OpenStack-based platform hybrids well to the Public Clouds such as AWS and Azure as well as to other OpenStack clouds. So does our MS Azure Stack with an Azure cloud which you can explore in our Cloud Solutions section!

 

4. Community Cloud

Community cloud

Is a community cloud right for you?

If you can tick most of these indicators, community cloud may be your best option

Speed

You already have the cloud infrastructure available 

There are others similar to start sharing resources with 

You are already member of a community cloud

Budget

There is an opex budget to operate your private cloud infrastructure

There is a budget available to connect to a community cloud 

 

Resources

You have an internal cloud that is ready to use

Your technical team has virtualization or cloud experience 

You have a budget & staff to hire developers & sysadmins with cloud skills

Demand

Your in-house cloud may not be able to handle high peaks of user demand

Your in-house cloud may not be able to handle bursts of data processing / analytics

Workloads in your cloud are not being replicated in a second site and this has an impact to your service-availability

Privacy & Compliance

Your project involves sensitive data subject to data & privacy laws

Your data & apps must be hosted on premise or at an approved dc in country

 

TOP TIP:  Underutillised resources are the greenest and most efficient to tap into. Combining underutilized resources in any community cloud: National, science, education, defense, banking etc. carries significant benefits to the wider community. You can try out RedHat Openstack 13 with OpenShift with us today!