Optimizing your Data Center with the Cloud

This post is brought to you by the Enterprise CIO Forum and HP’s Make It Matter.

Most organizations today have some type of cloud implementation and/or service.  Every organization views the cloud a little differently than any other organization. Some view the cloud as a place to store data while others view the cloud as a replacement for their data center.   Some companies are using the cloud to handle low priority workloads for non-critical systems while others are using the cloud for mission critical work that requires extremely high availability.

Integration with the cloud is a no-brainer for most organizations today since just about any size company can find value in the cloud.  Regardless of how an organization views or uses the cloud, there is no question that every organization can find a way to make the cloud a part of daily data center operations.

Whether your organization views the cloud as a ‘backup’ system or a ‘primary’ system, there’s value to be found in the cloud as a platform to assist with optimizing the data center.   There are many demands being placed on the data center today.  There’s an enormous amount of data coming into the data center along with demands to store and process that data. In addition to the amount of data hitting the data center today, there are many forecasts for exponential growth in data with the Internet of Things (IoT) initiatives underway in many organizations.

The data center today is different than the data center of ten years ago. The requirements of the data center today are similar than in previous years but the pace of change is dramatically faster. Running a data center the same way as it was run ten years ago will not and cannot work today. The data center must be able to be just as agile (if not more agile) than the business itself it it hopes to keep up with the speed of business in the future.

This is where the cloud comes into play. Rather than continually try to upgrade and update systems and platforms within the data center, organizations can look to the cloud as a means to maintain an efficient and cost-effective data center capability that is also agile and flexible.

The great thing about the cloud is that it can be different things to different companies. Your organization could move your mission critical applications to the cloud to ensure high availability and agility while keeping your legacy systems chugging along within your data center.  Conversely, you could move your non-critical systems to the cloud to open up the data center to handle your more important and more mission critical systems.

The way your company uses the cloud is up to you.You could build your own private cloud, use a public cloud or use a combination of the two with a hybrid cloud solution. The cloud brings a lot of flexibility to your organization and allows you to optimize your data center to ensure it (and the cloud) can deliver what your organization needs today and tomorrow.

This post is brought to you by the Enterprise CIO Forum and HP’s Make It Matter.