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Cloud Computing for Executives: Your Own Private Cloud?
One of the hottest, most talked about areas in IT is cloud computing. Customers of clouds get their applications up and running quickly and rely on the cloud to take care of the rest. Despite all the buzz, cloud computing is more evolutionary than revolutionary, and much easier to implement than you may think.
Clouds Can Be Private, PaaS it on
While there are different types and dimensions of cloud computing strategies (public, private, and software-as-a-service, to name a few), a platform-as-a-service (PaaS) private cloud is the low-hanging fruit for enterprises in adopting cloud computing. “A platform-as-a-service private cloud builds on a number of existing technologies, like service-oriented architecture, application grid, and systems management automation,” says Mike Piech, senior director of product marketing for Oracle’s application grid products. “This means you can leverage your middleware technologies in a cloud-like way to incrementally get to private PaaS.”
Putting It Together
Here’s how a PaaS private cloud works. Your teams access an internal, centrally-managed platform infrastructure service, comprising off-the-shelf middleware technologies and custom-built shared components. In doing so, they use a self-service model, like a portal, to access the infrastructure components they need to develop and deploy their applications. Once your applications are live, the PaaS private cloud dynamically adjusts to support changing capacity requirements. “Oracle Fusion Middleware provides the key infrastructure technologies to enable this self-service and automatic capacity adjustment,” says Piech. “You can use these technologies to jumpstart your PaaS private cloud and begin realizing value today.”
Delivering the Benefits
Once your PaaS private cloud is available and your departmental “customers” are empowered in their application development efforts, you’ll enjoy benefits across both business and IT:
- Agility - By leveraging this shared foundation as a service, your departments gain speed and flexibility in delivering systems to meet their specific business needs
- Efficiency - A PaaS private cloud reduces time, effort and cost in getting systems up and running, maintaining peak performance, and efficiently utilizing resources
- Quality of Service – You gain a greater ability to scale and maintain service-levels by leveraging the pieces of the platform that you need, as you need them.
Take the Next Step
You can incrementally evolve toward a PaaS private cloud, leveraging the people, processes, and technologies already in place within your organization. Here are a few best practices to consider:
- Centralize – Look at how your organization is structured. A centralized model is critical to setting up and running a shared platform. Leverage a centralized team you may already have in place, or create one to support your shared services. In addition, consolidate your existing middleware infrastructure centrally to support this strategy.
- Prioritize – What’s most important to your organization: providing a self-service model to empower teams in creating their applications? Or are you more concerned with automating capacity adjustment or certain aspects of application deployment? Start with the area that means most to your organization, and grow from there. Remember, it’s evolutionary.
- Address Security – In enabling self-service and a shared cloud infrastructure, even in a private deployment, security becomes more of a concern. Address security from the onset. Consider identity management, authorization, and access management to mitigate your business risk.
A platform-as-a-service private cloud can deliver extreme efficiencies and agility to your organization. It’s an important part of Oracle’s broader support for cloud computing. Learn more about cloud computing and the role of middleware in the Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g Forum worldwide events.
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