Evaluating benefits and risks while adopting cloud is expected to induce the business to move forward and deploy cloud solutions that spring up independently of the IT function.

It is imperative to continue developing and adopting new innovations that give impetus to the proliferation of communication and networks to reach and rectify the challenges the world faces currently. Cloud computing comes across as a unique platform for developing and harnessing most cost-efficient solutions having far-reaching implications on technologies, business environment, and people themselves.

Enterprises are beginning to change their buying behaviors based on deployment speed, economics, and customization provided by cloud-based technologies. It has been witnessed that best results are attained by enterprises that focus on a very specific strategy and look to cloud-based technologies to accelerate their performance. Adopting a strategic framework of goals and objectives increases the probability of cloud-based platform success. Those enterprises that look to cloud platforms only for cost reduction miss out on their full potential.

The business process-as-a-service (BPaaS) represents the largest segment, accounting for about 77 percent of the total cloud services market, while infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) is the fastest growing segment of the public cloud services market and is expected to grow 45.4 percent in 2012. BPaaS is projected to reach USD 144.7 billion by 2016, registering a compound annual growth rate of 15 percent.

The SaaS-based applications are expected to grow from USD 11.8 billion in 2012 to USD 26.5 billion in 2016, generating a CAGR of 17.4 percent globally, according to Gartner. Office suites, digital content creation, and business intelligence applications are anticipated to be the fastest-growing SaaS areas through 2016. Cloud adoption is growing rapidly among SMBs, content publishers, utilities, and public services.

The worldwide enterprise market for platform-as-a-service (PaaS) is estimated to reach USD 2.9 billion in 2016, representing a 26.6 percent CAGR. Application infrastructure and middleware is expected to be the largest revenue source in PaaS for the next four years. With a projected CAGR of 41.7 percent, IaaS is the fastest growing segment in their public cloud forecast. IaaS is expected to grow over USD 20 billion by 2016.

Cloud management and security services segment comprising security, IT operations management, storage management, cloud management, and security services generated USD 2.3 billion in 2011 with a forecast of USD 7.9 billion in 2016, registering a growth of 27.2 percent.

Requirements

Enterprise leaders are seeking competitive advantage and improved time-to-market for their busi¬?nesses any time they make an investment in the enterprise. They look forward to have a cloud strategy in place that makes sense for their unique business needs and customers. In addition, they want to leverage the benefits of cloud model, especially the ability to scale as a competitive response.

CIOs and IT managers need to maintain the relevancy and cost effectiveness of the IT organization within the larger business. They are typically struggling with the rate of growth of their IT infrastructure, the costs of managing it, low resource utilization, and the necessary flexibility to meet the rapidly changing needs of the business. CIOs and business unit leaders might be considering what their cloud strategy should be to maximize business benefit. They are primarily concerned with costs and ben¬?efits in addition to strategic direction.

In contrast, IT and data center architects from network, storage, and computing teams need expertise to help accelerate design and implementation of cloud-based architectures and solutions. Since architects and solution designers are more focused on design and implementation of an existing cloud strategy, they are more interested in assistance related to the archi¬?tectural implementation and operational models that cloud services can deliver.

IT program managers are focused on maintaining existing infrastructure, not devel¬?oping IT roadmaps and meeting new business needs. They are also dealing with a myriad of vendors and partners who are involved in current environments and require delivering a cloud-enabled solution. There is no one-size-fits-all cloud solution since business needs as well as net¬?work, computing, and storage quality and overall IT complexity differ from enterprise to enterprise.

While each phase of computing creates new ways to operate and manage IT, there are commonalities to each. The cost of computing has dramatically reduced and continues to fall. This has allowed organizations to deploy more compute capabilities in more places, cost-effectively. This is one of the main reasons cloud is becoming a reality instead of just a vision that organizations may never reach.

The strategic value of the network continues to rise. Computing has become more reliant on connectivity and this has never been more true than with cloud computing. This makes it the most network-centric computing model to date, and an organization's ultimate success or failure with the cloud can be determined by its network strategy.

The interdependence of the network and computing has grown increasingly stronger. With cloud computing, the network is the best way to manage, secure, and orchestrate cloud-based resources.

Limitations

As the role of the network has changed, current network strategies are no longer sufficient to enable a shift to the cloud. The key limitations of current network approaches include:

Inefficient use of network bandwidth. Historically, enterprise networks have been designed with a hub-and-spoke architecture. Each branch is connected only to the data center for connectivity. This means all traffic is backhauled over the corporate WAN, through the data center and then to its destination, whether it is the Internet or another branch. This trombone effect is highly inefficient as all traffic goes through a single choke point.

Inability to apply security policies. SaaS applications are not controlled by the enterprise, and the ability to apply data and network security is limited. With shared public clouds, enterprises must rely on inconsistent security capabilities offered by the cloud provider.

Poor network visibility. Legacy network management tools provide limited visibility at the network layer. Typically, the network manager has no ability to view application-level traffic or optimize it through the network.

Lack of control. Improving user experience and application performance requires more than just adding bandwidth. Better control over network choke points, with the ability to apply network optimization techniques, provides greater control for network managers.

Inconsistent user experience. Workers demand for access applications wherever and whenever they need them. Unfortunately, user experience varies widely depending on whether the user is in a branch office, telecommuting, and working from home or at other locations. This inconsistency can be extremely troublesome and can hurt morale in some situations.

Lack of survivability for SaaS applications. The continuous availability of business applications is paramount to the success of the organization. The network needs to be architected to survive link failure or degradation in performance.

The network has shifted from a tactical, best-effort resource to a key enabler, raising corporate productivity to unprecedented levels. To achieve this, the network must fundamentally change. This is the only scalable way companies can fully leverage public, private, and hybrid cloud services.

To get maximum benefit from cloud computing, organizations need an intelligent network capable of providing security, visibility, and optimization for a high-quality consistent user experience. Additionally, the network is the most scalable place to put the control points to manage and orchestrate cloud-based resources.

Customers that do not embrace the network as a foundation for cloud delivery put their organizations at risk, as users will experience inconsistent application performance, security exposure, and poor business continuity. Leveraged correctly, the network plays a key role helping any organization shift business applications to the cloud.

Role of the Network

The network plays a key role in the delivery and performance of cloud-based services, which has long been considered plumbing a tactical and not a strategic area.

The network is the best place to secure and manage the cloud. The two biggest barriers to broader use of cloud computing remain security and control. Many IT managers are unclear as to how to secure and manage resources that they no longer own, and are not on-premises. Pushing control and security points to the network allows IT managers to meet these challenges. The network is the only IT asset that touches every other IT resource.

The network is the most cost-effective delivery platform for cloud services. This worked well while hardware operating systems and applications were all tied together. In today's cloud-centric environment, a user can be in any location using a multitude of devices. The only way to cost-effectively deliver applications is to push the application into the cloud and use the network as the delivery mechanism.

The nature of applications has changed. Applications used to be deployed in tight silos where each application had dedicated storage, compute, and network resources. Virtualization makes it possible for application, compute, and network resources to reside almost anywhere. Many cloud computing services are delivered by mashing up components from multiple locations. The network ties these resources together to deliver a high-quality cloud experience.

The era of cloud computing raises the network from a tactical commodity used for best-effort traffic to a strategic asset for competitive differentiation. To capitalize on this, it needs to evolve into a cloud-intelligent network.

Developing a Cloud Strategy

CIOs require a roadmap for integrating cloud technologies into a broader IT and business strategy. Treating cloud as a separate initiative will only increase the complexity of addressing ageing IT infrastructure and legacy applications. Companies need a cloud strategy that provides a pragmatic approach to harnessing the benefits of cloud in the short term while laying a path toward achieving high performance in the long term. This means addressing how an enterprise is going to adopt cloud across its entire business, and whether that is done in a few years or over a multi-year span.

When assessing which element of the IT environment would benefit most from moving to the cloud, organizations need to take into account not only the enterprise architecture, but also the operating model. Traditional organizational models will not support the business agility required in this new environment. The relationship between IT and the business and the associated IT operating model need a wholesale change.

Cloud strategy is not something a CIO can delegate, because the cloud will have a great impact on a business's competitive dynamics. The CIO must take the lead in driving a high-level strategy. The opportunities presented by the cloud may seem endless, and somewhat daunting. Yet, if not handled strategically, the cloud's potential may remain unrealized. Enterprises need a collaborator who sees the cloud's possibilities for achieving high performance and marries them with a tailored practicality that suits the organization.

The cloud model changes the way business and technology interact at a strategic level. Therefore, IT's role also shifts dramatically - and quickly.