By now it is unlikely that many businesses in Ireland will be starting from the baseline when it comes to the cloud. Sure, they will have different levels of readiness to move various functions to it — you can see that across our customer base, and across the country as a whole.
But most will, at the very least, be aware of some of the advantages involved while many will have already begun the migration process in some form or another. In many cases, when we sit down with companies they simply need to get a better view of the capabilities that the cloud can offer aside from the more obvious functions.
During those conversations it has become obvious that an increasing amount of Irish companies will soon move towards the hybrid cloud. While the route towards that goal may vary for some, investing in a private cloud is quite often the first step.
Certainly, with concerns around security, reliability and where data resides, the private route seems the most straightforward for many to begin with. However, initial concerns over switching to a hybrid model can often be overcome after the period of migration into the private cloud is complete.
Once customers are satisfied that the cloud can address a lot of their concerns they then open their minds into bringing some features and functions into the public model, with advantages regarding flexibility and agility there for any business to see.
At that point you have a situation where a company such as BT can talk to a customer about what they deem important enough that it must go into the private cloud. There is not really a one size fits all solution in this instance, so we work with our customers at this point to draw up a strategy whereby we can see what lies a step further down in the food chain as it were, and how much of that can be moved into the public cloud.
Some will look to procure a private service form us and invest in a public cloud service from another provider. However, certainly in Ireland, BT has seen a trend towards using one company for both public and private. Of course, customers will not really feel the full value of the cloud if they do not have a robust network to run it on. With that in mind, one other factor which is at the forefront of many minds in the Irish market at present is the importance of the network in the cloud ecosystem.
Where once a business may have stood resolutely behind the traditional network model, now they want a network merging with the cloud to give them the best of both worlds. While the ideas and technologies to make this is a reality may still be developing, there have been some big leaps forward already.
Indeed, our research locally has shown that in the next 18 to 24 months we’ll see a large, large number of customers looking towards that merger of cloud and network technologies.
In order to create the correct solution for a company moving down this avenue we can work with them — be it from a network point of view or a cloud point of view — to find solutions that benefit their needs.
“Once customers are satisfied that the cloud can address a lot of their concerns they then open their minds into bringing some features and functions into the public model, with advantages regarding flexibility and agility there for any business to see”
On a case-by-case basis we work with customers to understand what the drivers are for their network needs and also what options have open to them in the cloud, constantly developing and evolving the strategy to back all that up.
Throughout such implementations what we’ve seen growing is a trend for businesses to look for a service provider they can partner with into the long-term, and someone who can bring an end-to-end service to them as well.
It is a situation which is a lot more appealing than looking around for a services provider for cloud, one for the network and so on. With that end-to-end capability, which we at BT certainly have, clients can be reassured that as they continue to evolve as a business their network and cloud portfolio can be as agile and flexible as it needs to be.
Our calibre in terms of the cloud and network services are well known at this stage, with respected IT research influencers, Gartner, placing BT in the ‘Leaders Quadrant’ in the Magic Quadrant for Global Network Service Providers for the tenth time earlier this year.
BT’s offerings in the cloud and network space is underpinned by in-house innovation and the ability to execute for our customers. We would see that as being the bedrock for nearly all the different services which BT provides.
Barry McMahon is cloud lead with BT Ireland.
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