The First Step in Cloud Computing

  by Austin Wenzel | 27 Aug 2009 | Permalink | Everything Else, Featured

The first step in cloud computing.

I think we all see that in the future at least a portion of your data center could be moving to the cloud. There are many reasons for the move to the cloud, which include it being service based, scalable & elastic, charged according to use, and all done over the internet. This will enable you to have instant access to more servers in times of need, at a very low cost. No longer will physical infrastructure, the building of new data centers, and addition of staff be necessary for organizations to have more computing power.

Most of the worlds leading organizations either have a current cloud computing initiative or are planning one in the near future. As organizations grow, the low cost and ease of the cloud seems to make the business sense. So what is the first step?

The first step to a cloud computing initiative is identifying what you can spin off into the cloud. To make this decision you need a list of application, servers, application dependencies, server groupings, and application to server dependencies. An organization can use the data that they have manually collected on their environment. Or they can choose to employ a tool like Tideway Foundation.

Tideway delivers a 90 day packaged service that give organizations the ability to understand their infrastructure without fear that they are missing something. For your company to gain the most benefit from moving all or part of there infrastructure to the cloud you need to have a top to bottom 360 degree view of that infrastructure from which you can make actionable decisions.

For example if your company is 90 days away from starting your first cloud intuitive and have decided to use Tideway what will you get? You will get a tabular and graphical representation of all your applications, servers, and the dependencies between them. These are a must to understand what infrastructure will be affected to avoid down time. This information will also ensure that you are doing the “move” in a strategic and most cost effective manner. Tideway Foundation will be delivered within the first 20 work days giving your organization time to use the information in planning the cloud computing project. This information will ensure that the servers that you decided to spin off into the cloud are the ones that you really meant to and that you have not missed additional cost savings opportunities.

In addition the deployment of Tideway Foundation will provide the ability to cut cost in the data center. It does this by helping you identify servers that may have been decommissioned but not unplugged, identifying where you may be over licensed, and giving you the information that can keep you from downtime.

Tideway Foundation is the first step in a cloud computing intuitive. Without the accurate and actionable data this tool provides, your cloud computing project could end up costing you time, money, and general resources that the intuitive was supposed to create. So while the cloud seems to be the way the world is headed…make sure you land softly with Tideway.