Whitepaper
“Our job in IT is to
provide technology
frameworks and an
operating model to
facilitate but not throttle
innovation.”1
—— Cynthia Stoddard,
CIO for NetApp
A Practical Guide to Choosing the Right Cloud
Options for Your Business
Executive Summary
Moving to the Cloud offers many business advantages, and is a natural
evolution for many businesses. Organizations are choosing Cloud services
to focus their staff on business priorities, fuel top-line growth, increase agility,
reduce capital expenses, and pay for only what they need on demand.
And the timing couldn’t be better as CIOs are becoming brokers of IT services
in response to C-Level pressure to support business growth, reduce cost, and
improve IT services and IT security.
However, organizations can choose from multiple Cloud options, making
it challenging – and often overwhelming – to determine the right option for
their business.
This paper explains the various Cloud options available – both Public and
© 2014 EarthLink, Inc. Trademarks are property of their respective owners. All rights reserved. 1071-07295
Private – and the pros and cons of each, providing a practical guide for
organizations to make the best choice.
Introduction: Realize the Promise of Cloud
Computing Today
Business owners and IT managers are faced with the challenges of having
enough budget and IT staff available to meet the business’s demands for
supporting and expanding IT systems and applications. Most businesses
would like to reduce the complexity of their IT infrastructure, and scale their
IT capabilities to accommodate changing business requirements. Specifically,
they want to roll out new applications faster to support customers, employees,
and partners.
And that’s challenging, especially in today’s world characterized by an
incredibly diverse and ever-expanding range of systems, devices and
operating systems. Most organizations lack the highly skilled IT workforce
to keep such an environment running smoothly without fail. Even if they do
maintain such skilled IT personnel, it makes far more business sense to keep
them focused on strategic revenue-generating initiatives than on routine system
implementation and maintenance.
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Many businesses are now developing or considering strategies to Cloud services satisfy
utilize the Cloud to help meet these objectives. After all, in the Cloud, both business and IT
organizations can often deploy new applications and services in
hours or days. Plus, many Cloud providers maintain a catalog of self- priorities
service applications that can be deployed almost instantly. In addition, Business priorities:
organizations can access nearly limitless computing and storage OOMinimize CAPEX
resources in the Cloud to instantly satisfy strategic growth initiatives or
seasonal demands, for example. OOMaximize employee
productivity
Essentially, Cloud hosting represents a very attractive solution for OOGrow the business
businesses of all sizes. Outsourcing the routine maintenance of IT
OOScale resources in
infrastructure and platforms is an ideal way to refocus skilled IT resources
and scarce IT budgets on more strategic business-building projects. real time to support
changing demand
Perhaps more than any other technology innovation of the past 15 years, OOMeet compliance
Cloud services offer the most promise when it comes to aligning IT with requirements with the
business goals. So it should come as no surprise that Cloud will be a key
component within the IT strategies of many businesses going forward. right levels of security
OOEnsure business
continuity
Cloud transforms the way businesses are run
IT priorities:
But Cloud isn’t just a future trend; it’s a permanent shift. Organizations can OOManage change
benefit today from the Cloud in the following ways:
OOUpgrade aging IT
• Reduce complexity by moving infrastructure components and infrastructure
management processes from a multi-silo infrastructure to resource OOManage IT
pools that can be managed as units instead of one machine at
a time. infrastructure and
• Dramatically reduce costs, maximizing server utilization by pooling growth without adding
resources, automating operational processes, and using Public Cloud staff
services where appropriate. OOOptimize utilization
• Deliver and scale IT services – regardless of where they are
OOEnsure disaster
sourced or delivered by flexibly using policy-driven automation
and self-service. recovery protection
OOFocus staff on growth
The Cloud also helps organizations keep things simple, allowing them to
move quickly without incurring unnecessary cost. With less IT infrastructure initiatives
to maintain on-site, software licensing and fixed operational costs decline.

In addition, the Cloud helps keep an organization’s IT staff productive.

With a Cloud infrastructure that’s compatible with the organization’s
on-premise environment, IT teams can organize by services instead of
technologies or geographies. As a result, organizations can tap into the
full value of their IT employees’ skills and experience.

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Businesses also realize a compliance benefit with the Cloud, because

consistent infrastructure means one set of policies, no matter where the Accelerate application
computing capacity is located. That means lower compliance costs, rollouts and time to value
and more consistent enforcement and reporting.
with the Cloud
Plus, the Cloud enables business agility – keeping on-premise resources Using Cloud infrastructure
lean and efficient, but with plenty of spare capacity available in the accelerates every process
Cloud when the business environment changes. Using virtualization
that stands between an
to consolidate on-premise resources improves efficiency and cost-
effectiveness, maintaining quality of service and keeping IT focused urgent priority and a
on value-add innovations. And when customer demand, competitor completed project, from
initiatives, or growth requires a change in capacity, Cloud infrastructure purchasing, testing and
allows instant adaptation. And it works in both directions – when the
capacity is no longer required, scaling down doesn’t require a lot of provisioning to deployment,
time and effort to decommission infrastructure, and there’s no investment scaling and recovery.
wasted on idle capacity.

Most important, Cloud infrastructure allows businesses to innovate quickly,

at much lower levels of risk. At the same time, businesses can start at their
own pace, taking a phased approach with certain applications hosted
in the Cloud. Then when they are more comfortable, they can add
additional applications and services.

It’s no wonder Cloud adoption is on the rise.

How to Make the Right Cloud Hosting Choice

Though most IT leaders understand that Cloud hosting and services can
satisfy both business and IT priorities, many still struggle to determine the
optimal choice for their organizations. They wonder whether they should
opt for a Public or Private Cloud, and if a Public Cloud, which version?

And they are right to carefully weigh their options. According to Gartner,
“The rush to cloud computing without a cohesive strategy is resulting in
cloud silos that reduce efficiency and effectiveness.”2

Let’s start by defining Private Cloud Hosting and Public Cloud Hosting.

Simply put, Private Cloud utilizes dedicated resources in the Cloud

to create a virtual IT environment, and can be integrated with an
organization’s on-premise virtual and physical servers. Gartner defines
Private Cloud Hosting as one owned, operated and controlled by a
single entity for exclusive use of its own user community. This approach
makes it easier to address security, privacy, compliance and other risks.
However, the organization must make a significant upfront and ongoing 3

The Clouds Are Lifting
“Cloud adoption
continued to rise in
2013, with 75% of
those surveyed reporting
the use of some sort
of cloud platform – up
from 67% last year. That
growth is consistent with
forecasts from GigaOM
Research, which expects
the total worldwide
addressable market
for cloud computing to
reach $158.8B by 2014,
an increase of 126.5
percent from 2011.”
—— North Bridge Venture
Partners and GigaOM
Research, 2013 Future of
Cloud Computing Survey
Whitepaper
investment. And it is unable to leverage the expertise of the external
cloud provider. Moreover, flexibility is limited to the capabilities of the
installed infrastructure.3
Public Cloud Hosting, on the other hand, offloads organizations of all
implementation, operation and maintenance of hardware and software. This
is especially valuable to businesses facing increasing challenges in procuring
and managing their IT infrastructure. According to Gartner, Public Cloud
Hosting is services shared by multiple customers, with little to no limitations on
who can access the service. The cloud service provider owns, operates and
controls all details of the cloud implementation. While this approach offers the
most leverage and greatest flexibility to the customer, the customer must be
aware of potential risk due to the shared nature of the service.4
Five key considerations for Cloud models
With an understanding of Public and Private Cloud, IT leaders next need to
assess both IT and business priorities to determine whether a Private or Public
Cloud offering makes the most sense.
Some of the key factors to consider when evaluating Cloud models are
performance SLAs, flexibility, management, complexity and cost. Selecting
the right Cloud model for each application is a tradeoff between these
factors (see Figure 1).
Flexibility and
Outsources
Management
Traditional
Data Center
Cost
Private Cloud
Public Cloud Application Complexity
Performance SLA
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Figure 1. Business strategy drives Cloud selection
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Application Needs Are the Examples of the tradeoff scenarios are as follows:
Determining Factor
According to Gartner, “The • For certain mission-critical applications that are highly complex and
types of applications and require the highest performance SLAs, a traditional data center might
workloads to be moved be the best option. However, that option is the most expensive, and
can indicate which stage
requires the most in-house management while offering the least amount
of [cloud] adoption is
most appropriate…Those
of flexibility.
applications with the most
strict control requirements • Less complex applications that desire maximum flexibility, lowest cost,
… will take a relatively and a fully managed solution, the Public Cloud presents the best options.
long time to become
commonplace in the public • Applications that require more privacy in a non-shared environment with
cloud…Those applications better economics and more flexibility are best suited for a Private Cloud
with moderate control issues
environment.
[such as those focused on
corporate processes or
work tracking systems, or A business may elect to employ all three models to support different types of
help desk and approval applications with varying requirements. In other words, organizations may opt
tracking] can move in a to maintain some applications in house while hosting others in the Cloud.
more timely fashion but still
may require some strong
consideration as to whether What to Seek in a Public Cloud Offering
or not the advantages of
cloud computing are worth Those organizations interested in the Public Cloud should seek a solution
the risks of moving…Finally, provider that can offer the basics of availability, security and flexibility as
those applications that are listed in Table 1, at a minimum.
more commoditized or less
differentiated can move to Availability Security Flexibility
the cloud immediately. These
High-availability routing and Managed network and Virtual servers
include productivity and
switching security services
collaborative applications
as well as potentially self- SAN storage and storage Data Center Firewalls and Network connectivity options
contained activities such as service levels security staff
development and test.”5
Table 1. What to seek in a Cloud offering

Organizations can then choose between traditional and consumption-

based hosting. Typically traditional hosting is best for organizations with a
small number of Virtual Machines (VMs), while consumption-based is ideal
for organizations with a larger number of VMs, allowing them to optimize
resources for cost efficiencies across their IT environment.

Ideally companies will work with a provider that helps them calculate
their baseline computing capacity, and allow them burst capacity to
accommodate demand.

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A consumption-based solution should include all of the above plus the

ability to do the following at a minimum:

…… Track and manage computing consumption across business units and

scale up or down as needed

…… Pool resources to reduce the cost of server sprawl

…… Make it possible for different divisions to manage their applications

through one portal

…… Empower IT teams to maintain total control through an administrator

portal

…… Connect to the network via various options in addition to the

public Internet. These options should include private MPLS and
secure remote access VPN that allow for physical and logical
separation or both public and private virtual environments and
isolation of private workloads with customizable security settings.

What to Seek in a Private Cloud Offering

Many IT leaders want to take advantage of the incredible efficiencies
inherent in Cloud virtualization, but still want to maintain visibility and
control over their IT infrastructure. This includes the desire to or need for:

• Move on-premises hardware to the Cloud and manage themselves

• Move an on-premises virtualized environment to the Cloud and
maintain control
• Extend their on-premises virtualized private environment to the Cloud,
and manage entire virtualized environment through a single interface
• A larger number of Virtual Machines (VMs), especially when 10 or
more VMs are needed
• A private environment with dedicated resources

Organizations with these use cases should seek a Private Cloud provided
via dedicated resources that enable a business to maintain security and
privacy policies and complete control over their own Cloud environment.
The ideal solution allows businesses to extend their on-premise virtualized
private environment to the Cloud, and manage their entire environment
through a single interface. It should also include software for centralized
management and control across on-premises and Cloud. In addition, it
should offer the same list of standard features as a Public Cloud listed in
table 1, at a minimum.
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Don’t Overlook What to Seek in Storage Service levels

Storage
Regardless of what As businesses seek to build efficient IT infrastructure that responds to their
dynamic environment, their choice in Cloud storage and data management is
kind of Cloud models no small decision. And because an organization’s choice of Cloud model is
a business chooses, largely dependent on application needs, it’s critical that the Cloud offering is
storage services are supported by the appropriate storage service levels. As a result, organizations
a key consideration should look for a Cloud provider that offers a set of storage service levels with
because data a range of price and performance fitting to the application.
lives on storage.
Capacity isn’t the SERVICE LEVELS FOR SHARED VIRTUALIZED STORAGE, SAN/NAS
key issue; it’s the right
combination of price Example Backup File Shares, E-Mail,
Databases, VDI OLTP, Analytics
Workloads Target Web Content
and performance for
a given application Performance Low Medium High Very High
workload. Underlying
Largest
Inexpensive Disks Fast Disks With
Fast Disks With
Inexpensive Flash Read/
Technology Disks
With Read Cache Read Cache
Overwrite

$/Gb $ $$ $$$ $$$$

99.999% Availability, Non-Disruptive Movement Between Service Levels

Table 2. What to seek in storage service levels

The provider should not only offer choices of storage service levels, its storage
services should include the following features:

• On-demand scalability to keep applications running

• Snapshots to provide crash-consistent local and/or offline backup
• Available off-site backup and/or Disaster Recovery replication
• Very high availability without disruption due to maintenance/upgrades

Conclusion: Don’t Get Left Behind

While it’s no small undertaking to consider a move to the Cloud, the
question isn’t whether organizations should move to the Cloud – it’s when
they should make the move. Ultimately the decision hinges on choosing the
Cloud provider with the offerings that best serve the organization’s IT and
business requirements.

Not all Clouds are created equal, nor can all providers offer the same
variety of Cloud solutions. Choosing the right Cloud is dependent on each

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Businesses that have organization’s unique situation and requirements. While the right choice
incorporated the Cloud can elevate the position of IT within the organization, the wrong choice can
into their technology undermine the value of the IT team. That’s why it’s critical for organizations to
work with a provider such as EarthLink Business that offers multiple types of
strategy are able to Clouds and provides the consultation expertise to help customize a solution.
focus their IT resources
on innovation rather Specifically, EarthLink Business offers the following Cloud solutions:
than on merely
“keeping the lights on.” • Private Cloud Hosting – Enables organizations to move or extend their
This approach paves on-premises hardware or virtualized environment to the Cloud, yet retain
the way for many more management via a single interface with the ability to control security
revenue-generating and privacy policies. Private Cloud Hosting also supports scalability for
larger numbers of Virtual Machines (VMs) and the need for a private
opportunities.
environment, with EarthLink providing the dedicated computing resources.

• Cloud Hosting (traditional public Cloud) – Allows organizations to take

advantage of everything from a single virtual Cloud server to a complete
private Cloud server farm running thousands of server partitions, in either
an unmanaged or fully managed hosting environment. Organizations can
easily migrate to the hosting service or extend their virtualized environment
to EarthLink Business Public Cloud Hosting as part of their own domain.

• EarthLink FlexCloud Hosting (consumption-based public Cloud) –

Provides a robust Cloud computing service that enables a business
to create secure IT environments for individual business units and
to optimize server utilization across multiple Cloud environments.
Organizations significantly reduce server sprawl, while their IT
team maintains complete control.

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EarthLink also offers a full range of Professional Services to help organizations

leverage the Cloud, from assessment services that enable a Cloud strategy to
migration services that ensure a smooth transition to the Cloud.

All EarthLink Cloud Hosting offerings provide network connectivity options

including Private MPLS with connectivity to EarthLink Data Center along
with a range of security and compliance solutions to support evolving
business objectives.

All EarthLink Business Cloud hosting options are also enabled by NetApp
storage solutions, the number-one storage solution in system capacity for
cloud infrastructure.6 According to IDC, “NetApp’s scale-out file-based
solution, clustered Data ONTAP, is different from other market alternatives
that leverage a host-based distributed file system. Because of this approach,
NetApp has an advantage over its competitors whose platforms based
on distributed file systems lacked mature support for block storage, storage
optimization features, and server virtualization.”7 NetApp storage includes
clustering features built atop the ONTAP platform, along with industry-
leading storage efficiency features, unified file and block support, and deep
integration with leading platforms from VMware, Microsoft, SAP and Oracle.
It also enables transparent data migration, non-disruptive operations, and
embedded flash acceleration.

By partnering with EarthLink Business – and taking advantage of its range

of offerings incorporating industry-leading NetApp storage – organizations
can quickly harness the nearly limitless potential of the Cloud.

Not sure if Cloud hosting is right for your business?

Let our IT solution consultants design a Cloud IT environment for you with a
Cloud Assessment.

To learn more about

how EarthLink can
help your organization SOURCES:
Email: 1. Forbes, 3 Challenges In Moving To The Cloud (A CIO’s Story), November 12, 2013
2. Gartner, How to Select the Right Cloud Management Platform, 23 July 2012
getsolutions@corp.earthlink.com 3. Gartner for IT Leaders Toolkit, How to Cut Through the Hype Surrounding Cloud Computing, 2013
Call: 4. Ibid
5. Gartner for IT Leaders Toolkit, How to Cut Through the Hype Surrounding Cloud Computing, 2013
1-855-919- 6600 6. IDC, IDC Storage Users Demand Study 2013 – Spring Edition, IDC #244209, November 2013
Visit: 7. IDC, IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Scale-Out File-Based Storage 2012 Vendor Analysis
www.earthlinkbusiness.com
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