- A TechNote on The Next Generation
- Jim Metzler
- Distinguished Research Fellow and Co-Founder
- Webtorials Analyst Division
This is the third in a series of four TechNotes reporting on some of our recent research into the use of cloud-based Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) solutions. The first and second TechNotes concerned The Growing Use of IaaS and The Drivers and Inhibitors of IaaS.
One of the key results of our research found agility to be of critical importance for IT organizations. Virtualization is the technology that has the greatest impact on increasing the agility of the IT organization. The best example of that is server virtualization.While that may be the most established form of virtualization, most IT organizations have also implemented storage virtualization. The component of IT that has been the slowest to virtualize is the network.
The Applicability and Management of Network Services
While the network has been relatively slow to virtualize, over the last year or two there has been a growing interest in the use of virtualized network services. With that trend in mind, the survey respondents were asked a number of questions that related to the role that virtualized network services play in the evaluation and selection of cloud-based IaaS services.
One of the questions contained a set of network services. The survey respondents were asked to indicate if they thought the network service should be part of a cloud-based IaaS service. If they did, they were asked whether they preferred to manage the network service themselves or have the Cloud Service Provider (CSP) manage it. The vast majority of respondents (87%+) thought that each one of the network services listed in the table below should be part of a cloud-based IaaS service.
The table below shows the percentage of respondents who prefer to manage the service themselves as well as the percentage of those who prefer to have a CSP manage the service.
One obvious conclusion that can be drawn from the data is that there is a strong desire on the part of IT organizations to manage the security-related network services that are part of an IaaS service. There is somewhat less interest on the part of IT organizations to manage the other network services. When it comes to WAN optimization, the interest is evenly split.
An enterprise architect who was interviewed said that in most cases he wants to see network services such as load balancing, firewalls and IDS/IPS be part of an IaaS solution. He added that the importance of other network services, such as WAN optimization, depends on the IaaS solution and how his company is using that solution. The enterprise architect said that before he would let an IaaS provider manage the network services he would have to feel comfortable with both their competency and their cost structure. In all cases, however, he would want a separate organization auditing the security of the overall IaaS solution.
In our next TechNote we will wrap up the discussion of IaaS and focus on how IT organizations evaluate network services when acquiring IaaS solutions.
This article is brought to you in part due to the generous support of:
One of the key results of our research found agility to be of critical importance for IT organizations. Virtualization is the technology that has the greatest impact on increasing the agility of the IT organization. The best example of that is server virtualization.While that may be the most established form of virtualization, most IT organizations have also implemented storage virtualization. The component of IT that has been the slowest to virtualize is the network.
The Applicability and Management of Network Services
While the network has been relatively slow to virtualize, over the last year or two there has been a growing interest in the use of virtualized network services. With that trend in mind, the survey respondents were asked a number of questions that related to the role that virtualized network services play in the evaluation and selection of cloud-based IaaS services.
One of the questions contained a set of network services. The survey respondents were asked to indicate if they thought the network service should be part of a cloud-based IaaS service. If they did, they were asked whether they preferred to manage the network service themselves or have the Cloud Service Provider (CSP) manage it. The vast majority of respondents (87%+) thought that each one of the network services listed in the table below should be part of a cloud-based IaaS service.
The table below shows the percentage of respondents who prefer to manage the service themselves as well as the percentage of those who prefer to have a CSP manage the service.
One obvious conclusion that can be drawn from the data is that there is a strong desire on the part of IT organizations to manage the security-related network services that are part of an IaaS service. There is somewhat less interest on the part of IT organizations to manage the other network services. When it comes to WAN optimization, the interest is evenly split.An enterprise architect who was interviewed said that in most cases he wants to see network services such as load balancing, firewalls and IDS/IPS be part of an IaaS solution. He added that the importance of other network services, such as WAN optimization, depends on the IaaS solution and how his company is using that solution. The enterprise architect said that before he would let an IaaS provider manage the network services he would have to feel comfortable with both their competency and their cost structure. In all cases, however, he would want a separate organization auditing the security of the overall IaaS solution.
In our next TechNote we will wrap up the discussion of IaaS and focus on how IT organizations evaluate network services when acquiring IaaS solutions.
This article is brought to you in part due to the generous support of:
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What was the most surprising thing you learned about the role that network services play in the adoption of IaaS solutions.
When IaaS solutions were first being offered and were first being discussed in the press, you often heard that IaaS providers were offering “raw compute” or “raw storage”. As part of the maturation of the market we are seeing that IT organizations don’t want “raw” solutions. For the most part, IT organizations expect that the IaaS solutions they acquire will come with a wide range of sophisticated services.