| Significant savings | |
| “We firmly believe that 100% of clouds will be hybrid into the foreseeable future” |  Arkphire: Howard Roberts, CIO |
| The real question is not just Software Defined Networking but Software Defined Data Centre.The challenge right now is for enterprises to extend virtualisation from the server layer into the remainder of the infrastructure stack in their Data Centres in order to enable maximum cost savings. The concept is relatively simple. It is based on the tried and tested concepts of server virtualisation (i.e. abstraction, pooling and automation) and extending this to ALL Data Centre resources and services.Arkphire firmly believe that 100% of clouds will be hybrid into the foreseeable future. Certain workloads will remain on private cloud but a significant number can leverage public/hybrid cloud platforms with significant cost savings for a range of services including: • Cloud bursting (IaaS) • Test & Development (Iaas) • Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) • Desktop as a Service (DaaS)This list includes just a few of the current use cases.What’s more important to consider is not the concept of a having a private and a public cloud, but having a private and a public cloud that work together. The ability to leverage common management tools that allow for seamless movement and management of resources from private to public AND back again is a major focus area for true enablement. Earlier this year we saw the entry of VMware into the hybrid cloud services market in Europe, positioning themselves against the industry leaders. VMware owns 80% of the private cloud hypervisor market and its entry into the Hybrid Cloud market aims to leverage this to attract its existing customer base into the hybrid cloud market. It is evident that VMware’s intention is to provide services above and beyond core Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). The most significant differentiator for VMware is its ability to extend a customers’ private cloud to an external private or hybrid instance while maintaining the visibility and manageability of the whole environment from the toolsets with which customers are already very comfortable.
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| Transition management | |
| “The ability to utilise SDN properly means enterprises must properly understand their network, how it is currently deployed, and how it copes with current and future demands from applications” |  Agile Networks: Darragh Richardson |
| The theory behind SDN and hybrid clouds is similar — only spend money on what’s really important to you and your network, and save money (and time) by buying standardised components for less critical elements.For example within SDN the control plane and data plane are physically separated (i.e. two different boxes and not just two components within the same box) and the communication between both entities is an open standard-based protocol. This separation allows enterprises to centralize the control plane and controls multiple devices. This means you could, for example, save on cheap CPE and orchestrate more from the centre using different boxes from different vendors.The devil of course is in the detail. The ability to utilise SDN properly means enterprises must properly understand their network, how it is currently deployed, and how it copes with current and future demands from applications. This expertise of course can be provided by a partner also but whether it is internal or external it does involve cost.In a similar fashion hybrid cloud models presume that enterprises know what they want and how they want to deliver applications hosted in either public or private clouds. As with SDN, this knowledge should sit inside enterprises but the reality is often different. Again partners can add value and expertise but there is a cost (and potential bias) with this approach.There is no doubt that smart enterprises will start to save money with hybrid cloud models first and SDN further down the track. For now the key is having the right resources and knowledge to manage this transition. Identify early case projects that are easier to quantify, justify, and build a broader support for more bold initiatives in the future. And make sure you have a partner who has your best interests at heart and really understands how to make technology work for you rather than vice versa.
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| Fabric attached | |
| “From a storage point of view in particular, Irish customers realise that a review of the current systems being employed can have a positive impact and that even some minor changes can make a huge difference to the efficiency of their network.” |  NetApp: Laurence James, Product Alliances and Solutions Marketing Manager for UK & Ireland |
| In conversation with Laurence James, NetApp Product Alliances and Solutions Marketing Manager for UK&Ireland.When you examine the enterprise network market at the moment one of the standout trends is the fact that customers are far savvier about what represents the right type of option for their business. I’ve seen customers who have a three way model for example, under which they firstly have the data and functions clearly mapped out which they would like to keep on premise. Then they’re using a partner to carry out certain features and functions in an ‘as-a-service’ manner.Finally their developers have gone to a cloud services provider to help spin up the right development environment really quickly if needed. I’ve chatted to a number of customers running that model lately and the challenge for them is consistency of data transport between that three way system – which is one of the challenges we’ve been very concentrated on of late as well.That type of nuanced plan is something that may have been a rarity in previous years but thankfully that’s no longer the case.From a storage point of view in particular, Irish customers realise that a review of the current systems being employed can have a positive impact and that even some minor changes can make a huge difference to the efficiency of their network. Avnet supplies the Irish market with NetApp’s range of storage options and one which we’ve noticed gaining plenty of attention of late is the complete refresh undertaken on our Fabric-Attached Storage (FAS) option to help IT efficiency, business agility, high application uptime, and simplified data management FAS becomes an integral part of an enterprise-class storage area network (SAN) as well as acting as a networked storage appliance. It can serve storage over a network using file-based protocols such as NFS, CIFS, FTP, TFTP, and HTTP. In addition, Irish customers can take advantage of our flagship operating system – Data ONTAP – which is a system which really defines the personality for the storage it’s controlling. A highly customised operating system, it was originally designed by NetApp founders David Hitz and James Lau. Data ONTAP gets rid of things like de-duplication and compression as well as giving you thin provisioning capabilities in addition to other features. Using these features, you’re helping to manage resources a lot more intelligently, and within an Irish context in particular – where the SME is the prevalent business size – it should be noted that these features can be optimised whether you’re at a high-end or entry level in terms of your storage needs. These type of options are important in a market where – from what we’ve seen and heard – both in the SME space as well as at enterprise level, organisations are growing and with that they’ve tended to grow their storage organically alongside that. To ensure that continued growth and development of those small, medium and large businesses runs smoothly, partnering with company who can offer significantly advanced storage options is a must.
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