Planning for Cloud Integration: Pitfalls and Advantages - Deploying and Managing a Cloud Infrastructure - page 381

Enterprise Collaboration Tools Enterprise can host their projects on SaaS solutions.
This allows an enterprises to not only establish a common platform on which all of its
employees can collaborate but also to also monitor progress and develop using common
development tools. However, a big disadvantage is vendor lock-in for IT projects that use
vendor-specific APIs.
Cloud Monitoring Applications Organizations are usually interested in monitoring their
applications for performance and failures. They can employ the use of SaaS-based cloud
monitoring services to set up self-configuration and self-healing solutions. Custom alerts
for problems that cannot be automatically fixed may also be set up, as can scheduled auto-
matic system maintenance for planned outages.
The Right Cloud Model
Organizations need to understand how to best deliver IT services by means of various cloud
deployment models. It is a huge challenge to determine which cloud model fits their business
needs. In the following sections, we evaluate the three cloud deployment models—private,
public, and hybrid—and present useful information to assist in the decision-making process.
Let us first look at a few factors that could help in leading up to the decision. First,
companies need to evaluate their existing infrastructure. The infrastructure depends on all
application requirements, the environments needed for testing applications, the duration
of testing, and the migration to production setups. This is important because testing appli-
cations, staging them, and migrating to the production environment could be a long and
challenging endeavor.
Once that has been ascertained, budget becomes the next factor. It is important to deter-
mine whether an organization could and would move from a capital expenditure (CAPEX)
model to an operating expenditure (OPEX) model. This includes the willingness for allocating
budget for investments in the cloud and flexibility in terms of contingencies.
The next factor is the need to look into scenarios that would provide an ideal fit for
applications for each cloud deployment model. The scenarios for the three primary cloud
deployment models are covered in the next sections.
Private Cloud
The private cloud model is subdivided into two models, the enterprise private cloud and the
virtual private cloud. We will cover both.
Enterprise Private Cloud
The enterprise private cloud is a cloud resource pool that is physically deployed within an
organization's network and firewall. For all purposes, it can be thought of as a company-
created, owned, and operated data center. Companies may also create private cloud
resources from existing hardware.