The Virtual Computing Environment Coalition

Worldwide spending on data center technology infrastructure and services exceeds $350 billion annually, according to McKinsey and Company estimates, with half of that spent on capital expenses and half on operating expenses.

Further, an estimated 70 percent or more of those costs are expended to maintain existing infrastructures, leaving 30 percent or less for new technology initiatives and applications that can provide breakthrough differentiation for businesses.

It is also estimated that approximately $85 billion, or 20 percent of this total market, can be addressed with data center virtualization and private cloud technology by 2015.

Cisco and EMC, together with VMware, have introduced the Virtual Computing Environment coalition, an unprecedented collaboration of three information technology (IT) industry leaders.

Virtual Computing Environment Coalition Charter
The coalition has been created to accelerate customers' ability to increase business agility through greater IT infrastructure flexibility, and lower IT, energy and real estate costs through pervasive data center virtualization and a transition to private cloud infrastructures.

Cisco, EMC and VMware have worked closely over the past year on a shared vision for the future of enterprise IT infrastructure -- private cloud computing. A private cloud is a virtual IT infrastructure that is securely controlled and operated solely for one organization.

It can be managed either by that organization or a third party, and it can exist on- or off-premise -- or in combination. Private cloud computing offers the controls and security of today's data center with the agility required for business innovation at substantially lower costs.

The Virtual Computing Environment coalition offers organizations of all sizes an accelerated approach to data center transformation with dramatic efficiencies that promise significant reductions in both capital and operating expenses. As a result, organizations will no longer have to choose between best-of-breed technologies and end-to-end vendor accountability.

Ecosystem Collaboration and Open Innovation
The Virtual Computing Environment coalition already has partners committed to the coalition. This includes representation from the entire partner ecosystem, including systems integrators, value added resellers, service providers, and independent software vendors.

IT Managers Share Their Cloud Experiences

The common best-practices associated with managed cloud service utilization are hard to find, since the early-adopters rarely share their insights. Of course, for all the other people that are still assessing the potential benefits, that guidance is truly invaluable.

Therefore, it's very helpful that Forrester Research was able to interview more than 60 organizations that are currently leveraging Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) cloud-based solutions within their business environment.

Forrester defines public IaaS cloud computing as the delivery of compute (virtualized servers, storage, and networking) on-demand as a shared service. Based on their findings, they say that the evolving usage characteristics fall primarily into three emerging practices.

Test and Development in the Cloud
The most common practice they found among enterprise users of IaaS cloud platforms was to build and validate new apps. Cloud platforms provide relief for in-house test and development teams who face resource constraints. Moving these actions to the cloud relieves a significant IT burden, but only for apps that are suited to the cloud -- those that can fit within the confines of a virtual server.

Deploying Web Applications
The majority of applications deployed on public cloud infrastructures are Web-based apps. Early users of IaaS clouds have found the greatest benefits with Web apps that are short-term oriented and/or unpredictable or volatile traffic patterns. These types of apps can best take advantage of the pay-per-use element of cloud infrastructures to right-size the cost of deployment to the behaviors of the apps.

High-Performance Computing
Another good fit with IaaS cloud platforms is high-performance computing. These often massively parallel programs can be scaled-out to effectively tackle very large problems, and the constraints of HPC are usually the size of compute grid that can be deployed. Enterprises are constantly having to trade off grid size and cost against speed of getting the result. Apparently, IaaS clouds provide relief to this tension.

Next Wave of Manage Cloud Service Apps
According to Forrester, given the above mentioned IaaS best practices, the next wave of cloud services best practices that infrastructure and operations professionals should focus on are as follows:

• Leveraging cloud management applications and services.
• Cloud bursting -- to maximize scaling within the cloud.
• Integrating cloud services with data center services.
• Leveraging cloud-scale services.
  

The Beginner's Guide to Cloud Adoption
So, where should you start? Forrester suggests, make sure you have supportive executives who will view your use of cloud computing as empowering for the business -- not as a threat to infrastructure and operations. Then, start experimenting with the common applications listed.

Clearly, IT and network out-tasking has a place in most organizations. Forrester says that their key findings show that cloud, while truly compelling, shouldn't be viewed as a replacement for the data center. It is, however, a viable alternative approach to consider.

Faculty and staff are going Google, too

September was a big month for Google Apps Education Edition as everyone headed back to school. When we announced five million active users in early September, we didn't expect that it would only be about a month before we would announce that more than six million students, staff, and faculty at schools worldwide are now actively using Google Apps at school.

We talk a lot about what students want and need (and we also try to learn from them as much as possible), but it's important to remember that these six million users aren't only students – they are also faculty and staff members using Google Apps technology in education.

The cloud is all about collaboration, and this means not only students working together, but also students working with their teachers and professors to improve learning outcomes and save time. Using internet-based solutions like Google Apps to enhance the cycle of lesson, evaluation, and adjustment can shorten what used to take days or weeks into minutes, and collaborating in the cloud helps educators connect more effectively with students.

There are lots of examples we're seeing crop up on campuses. For example New York City's Intermediate School 339 ensured clear communication between students, teachers, and the community by moving the entire campus to Google Apps, and taking advantage of features like forms in Google Docs to create real-time quizzes helped to double Math performance scores, increase attendance, and build student engagement.

And, after Boise State University migrated their 2,400 faculty and staff to Google Apps, not only were they able to foster better collaboration between students and staff, but they reduced costs for IT infrastructure, support, and maintenance by $90,000 annually.

Other schools that have chosen Google Apps for their faculty and staff include Temple University, Columbus State University, Abilene Christian University, Macalester College, Manhattan College, Mary Baldwin College, Northeastern State University, and Saint Louis University (including 8,500 staff from their Medical Center and Hospital).

We strongly believe that when all education users - from students to professors to school administrators - have access to cloud-based tools and aren't limited by where or when they work, it enhances their ability to communicate and collaborate effectively. So come on, Go Google and join these schools (and many others) in the cloud with Google Apps.

Posted by Miriam Schneider, Google Apps Education Edition team

Learn more about what's possible for your school with Google Apps Education Edition.

Research finds that IT departments are thinking in the cloud

Google recently sponsored a global, multi-industry research project surveying 1,125 IT decision-makers and their perceptions about cloud computing and the key drivers behind the growth of cloud-based IT solutions.

We're sharing the results of the study in a new whitepaper: the Google Communications Intelligence Report. The findings provide some insights on what types of organizations are moving to the cloud, what value they find there, and what the key drivers for and barriers to adoption are. Some of the key takeaways follow:

• More than 60% of respondents indicated that the IT department holds the majority of the responsibility for communications security and compliance, but fewer than 20% feel they are well equipped to handle it.
• Email security, web security, and messaging are the cloud applications most widely adopted, and organizations using these applications in the cloud report higher satisfaction than users of traditional platforms.
• Ease of use is cited as the key motivator for transitioning to cloud-based applications.
• Although price is mentioned as a key deterrent for respondents who are not yet using cloud-based apps, value is cited as a key benefit by respondents who already work in the cloud.

In these findings – and in our conversations with businesses of all types and sizes – we are seeing that more and more businesses are finding enhanced productivity and IT efficiency when they move their applications to the cloud with services such as Postini or Google Apps. That the cloud movement is more than just a trend is validated by our research findings, which indicate that 50% of the respondents who were aware of but not currently using cloud-based apps are planning to deploy a cloud solution within the next 12 months.

Read more about how your organization (or business) might benefit from the research in the Communication Intelligence Report.

Posted by Adam Swidler, Google Postini Services team

Five Proven Benefits of Cloud Services

How can your company get started with cloud computing? Well, consider following the market leaders. With a few more months of client experience, Forrester Research recently addressed the major questions that executives have about the adoption of cloud services.

The key benefits that most early adopters report do not start with costs -- but rather with business flexibility. According to those that have deployed it, the benefits of cloud computing, in order of importance, are:

1. Improving time-to-application deployment. Cloud platforms give you the option of developing and deploying new applications on existing infrastructure as quickly as desired. Traditional platforms can take up to three or four months to procure, install, and configure, stalling the application deployment process.

2. Aligning IT budgets with application demand. How many Web applications does your organization deploy without exactly knowing how popular they’ll be or how much capacity you’ll need to accommodate that popularity? Many of the early cloud adopters host customer and public-facing Web applications with cloud providers for this reason. They can pay just for the resources they use, hour by hour.

3. Accommodating peaks in demand for data center capacity. Cloud computing is also good for handling episodic spikes in demand for computing, storage, and network resources. Rather than provision for the expected peak of the holiday shopping season, retailers can push the additional demand into a cloud environment. Big batch jobs also fit this model.

4. Delivering applications without raising the budget. Cloud computing gives you the ability to deliver new applications without having to buy systems, avoiding an investment of your firm’s capital in new equipment. Application development and delivery can all be handled using pay-as-you-go operating expenses.

5. Sharing without putting the data center at risk. Many of the early adopters of cloud computing are looking for an inexpensive and easily accessible way to share information. Medical researchers are an example. Cloud services enable these organizations to host data on public clouds, rather than making their internal data center available to external parties.

Three Questions to Ask a Cloud Service Provider
How do you know if a managed cloud service provider is a good-fit for your business? Forrester concludes that you should ask all providers the following three basic questions:

• What are your enterprise references and what kinds of applications do those organizations run in your cloud?
• For which application scenarios does your cloud environment deliver the maximum flexibility and scalability?
• What security and reliability commitments do you make to your customers?
  

How Google tackles IT security – and what you can learn from it

Providers of cloud computing services like Google are equipped to protect millions of users' data every day – it's core to how we run our business. Our users enjoy our economies of scale at minimal expense. We also employ some of the world's best security experts to help to make sure that your data stays safe.


On October 1, join us for a live webcast with some of our top security experts who are on the front lines of fighting spam, malware, and phishing for Google Apps users, designing identity management systems for hosted web apps, and monitoring the Google network for potential threats. Register for this live webcast, “How Google Tackles IT Security – and What You Can Learn From It,” to learn about security in the cloud and get your questions answered by members of Google's Security team. Participants include:

Eran Feigenbaum – As the Director of Security for Google Apps, Eran Feigenbaum defines and implements security strategy for Google's suite of solutions for enterprises. Prior to joining Google in 2007, Eran was the US Chief Information Security Officer for PricewaterhouseCoopers.

John Flynn – John “Four” Flynn has an extensive background in network monitoring, intrusion detection, and incident response. John currently leads Google's Security Monitoring program and is a founder of Google's Security Metrics group.

Bradley Taylor – Gmail's “Spam Czar,” Brad Taylor leads Gmail's technical anti-spam, anti-abuse, and email delivery engineering efforts. Brad has played a key role in the development of Gmail's spam filter since Gmail launched in April, 2004.

Eric Sachs – Eric Sachs has over 15 years of experience with user identity and security for hosted web applications. During his years at Google, he has worked as a Product Manager for many services including Google Accounts, Google Apps, orkut, Google Health, Google Security, and Internal Systems.

While circumstances may vary, most IT departments face similar security challenges. Find out more from the people who confront these issues every day here at Google.

Join us for our live webcast to learn about the people, best practices, and technologies that we have in place to minimize security threats.

How Google Tackles IT Security – and What You Can Learn From It
Thursday, October 1, 2009
11:00 a.m. PDT / 2:00 p.m. EDT / 6:00 p.m. GMT

We hope to see you there.

Posted by Serena Satyasai, Google Apps team

Find customer stories and product information on our resource sites for current users of Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes/Domino.

Cloud adoption and getting voted best mid-market solution at the Mid-sized Enterprise Summit

Last week, I attended the Mid-sized Enterprise Summit West in Los Angeles. I enjoyed the opportunity to hear from industry leaders and thinkers and connect with CIOs and senior IT leaders from a wide variety of companies and industries. The hot topic of the conference? Cloud computing and how it can drive innovation.

Several speakers touched upon using the latest Internet technologies to accelerate business results. Geoffrey Moore presented on the importance of businesses focusing on their core competencies as a way of driving innovation and amplifying their competitive advantage. Andrew McAfee, who teaches at Harvard Business School and coined the phrase "Enterprise 2.0," explained how the collaborative opportunities offered by tools such as wikis and user-rated intranet search results can reinvigorate employee engagement and accelerate innovation.

It was heartening to hear these ideas because this is very much how we do things at Google and what we hear from our leading-edge customers. For example, it's very common practice for our global, cross-functional teams to use Google Sites (an easy way to create and publish web pages) to manage product launches (just recently, JohnsonDiversey talked about how Google Sites powers a global leadership council, an HR talent review process, and many other things).

Finally, in our breakout sessions we showcased how businesses have utilized the wide range of tools that Google offers for business – for example, Hamilton Beach, which has been able to free up IT resources and focus on its core business.

Finally, we took the pulse of the conference by surveying attendees on their attitude toward Software as a Service (SaaS) or, as it's also known, cloud computing. Our survey reached about 70% of the conference attendees, and it's interesting to note that 46% reported either "actively embracing the cloud" or having "implemented one or two apps." That said, another 40% described themselves as "curious but hesitant," so it was great for us to engage with audiences who still have questions about how Google Apps can work for their business.

We were also grateful that conference participants voted us "Best Midmarket Solution – Services" the second time in a row. Thanks, MES, for another great event! We hope to see everyone in the spring.

Posted by Mike Lee, Google Apps team

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Google Apps and Government

Everyone benefits from cloud computing, though few stand to benefit more than government. The cloud helps agencies at all levels increase productivity, cut costs, keep pace with technology innovation, and become more open and transparent with their citizens.

That's why we were pleased to join other industry leaders today at NASA's Ames Research Center to hear Vivek Kundra, the CIO of the US Federal Government, announce the launch of Apps.gov. Apps.gov is an online storefront that makes it easy for federal agencies to browse and purchase cloud-based IT services from a variety of service providers, including Google. The cloud is coming of age, and we applaud the Obama Administration's efforts to ensure our government realizes its many advantages.

We also want to do our part to make it easier for government to transition to cloud computing. We recognize that government agencies have unique regulatory and compliance requirements for IT systems, and cloud computing is no exception. So we've invested a lot of time in understanding government's needs and how they relate to cloud computing. To help meet those requirements we're taking two important steps:

• FISMA certification for Google Apps. In July, we announced our intent to secure certification for Google Apps to demonstrate compliance with the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA), the law defining security requirements that must be met by all US Federal government information systems. Our FISMA process is nearing completion. We will submit a Certification and Accreditation (C&A) package to the U.S. Government before the end of this year. Upon review and approval of the Google Apps C&A package, agencies will be able to deploy Google Apps knowing that it is authorized to operate under FISMA.

• Dedicated Google cloud for government customers in the US. Today, we're excited to announce our intent to create a government cloud, which we expect to become operational in 2010. Offering the same services and features as our existing commercial cloud (such as Google Apps), this dedicated environment within existing Google facilities in the US will serve the unique needs of US federal, state, and local governments. It is similar to a "Community Cloud" as defined by the National Institute for Science and Technology. The government cloud will allow Google to manage and meet additional government policy requirements beyond FISMA.
  

We look forward to working with governments across the country on these exciting initiatives in the months ahead.

Posted by Matthew Glotzbach, Director, Product Management, Google Enterprise

Why Early-Adopters Embrace the Cloud

Cloud computing is all about new technology, right? Well, perhaps that depends upon your point of view -- as an application developer, or a business decision maker.

Private Cloud development will grow during the coming year, with 48.9% of developers expecting to deploy applications (via their on-site data center), according to a survey of 500 software developers by Evans Data Corp.

Their survey showed that 29.7% are currently working on applications destined for a private cloud environment, while an additional 19.2% expect to enter development within the next 12 months.

Taking Baby Steps with Cloud Computing
"Software developers are finding many reasons to develop software for the cloud, whether for a private cloud or public cloud," said John Andrews, President and CEO of Evans Data. "Not surprising, while developers want to take advantage of the cloud, our research indicates a strong preference for them to favor a cloud related development environment to simply extend their existing technology know-how."

The survey measured the intentions and adoption patterns of developers. This included Public and Private Cloud development -- types of apps moving first to the Cloud, development dynamics and tools for developing in the Cloud, data centers and virtualization, security, regulations, benefits, and inhibitors.

"Private clouds seem to be appealing for the easier methods of deploying and automating software delivery rather than the elasticity, and different pricing, that drove the initial fervor in public clouds," commented Michael Cote, software industry analyst for Redmonk.

Michael Dortch, acting director of research at Focus, said "Frankly, I'm surprised it's only 48 percent of developers, given that software as a service and other cloud-based elements are the only piece of the current software marketplace showing consistent, significant growth."

The survey results expose the trends. Half of the developers using Amazon public cloud services are adopting them experimentally or for prototyping -- rather than for business critical applications.

Three quarters of developers think that data for applications deployed in the cloud should be backed-up outside the public cloud -- either in traditional on-site storage or in a private cloud.

Fearless Early-Adopters Seek an Advantage
"The buying community is setting themselves up for another cloud spending moment once they decide public clouds are okay and move from private clouds," Cote said. "While security and regulatory concerns are very real, companies would do well to spend time asserting how they might skip some of their computing needs over the public clouds and avoid paying twice for everything."

That said, the primary motivation for business decision makers, that are early-adopters of managed cloud services, can be simply put -- strategic competitive advantage. While their peer group ponders the risks versus rewards, they're already vigorously moving forward.

Los Angeles universities take to the clouds with Google Apps

Robert H.A. Moore recognized that he couldn't go it alone. As a student drafting proposals for the University of Southern California Undergraduate Student Government (USG), Moore realized that, even at the undergraduate level, collaboration was essential for politics and content. So Moore turned to multiple Google applications to help manage proposals, reports and projects developed with the input of more than 70 individuals in the USG offices. Moore, like other USC students, has used Google Apps Education Edition to communicate and collaborate with other students and faculty since USC launched Google Apps in late 2007.

USC isn't the only Los Angeles-area school that's using Google Apps. Today we'd also like to hail Pepperdine University, and Loyola Marymount University (LMU), which – in addition to USC – are all offering Google Apps for Education to students. While we see schools adopting Apps worldwide, this trend demonstrates LA schools are at the head of the class in regard to making the most of the benefits of cloud computing.

Universities choose Google Apps for a variety of reasons. Pepperdine University Chief Information Officer Dr. Timothy Chester echoes the importance of leveraging Google scale to run Pepperdine's communication and collaboration through Google Apps. "Google Apps allows us to tap into economies of scale that we simply can't create on our own," Chester notes. "Furthermore, it aligns our capabilities with the stream of innovation in the cloud." When Pepperdine's 10,000+ students arrive back at school this fall, they'll be able to use Google Apps with each other and with faculty and staff – just as Robert has been doing at USC.

In addition, when schools switch to Apps, Google takes care of all the hardware and security maintenance, so IT departments can focus on more interesting projects rather than fighting fires.

While universities and other schools represent some of the largest organizations using cloud computing suites like Google Apps Education, businesses and government agencies at all levels are moving cloud-ward as well. Large businesses including Genentech, Motorola, Fairchild Semiconductor, and Valeo are all in the cloud. The City of Washington DC rolled out Google Apps to 38,000 city employees last year and the Obama administration encouraged cloud computing in the FY2010 budget report as innovative technology that also helps save money.


Pepperdine, LMU, and USC are some of the pillars of higher education in Los Angeles and it's exciting to see them adopting cloud computing. It's great for Southern California, and is also a microcosm of the rest of the education world. The next generation of professionals is learning not only in the classroom, but in the cloud as well.

Posted by Miriam Schneider, Google Apps Education Team

Get timely updates on new features in Google Apps by subscribing to our RSS feed or email alerts.

Updated 07/27/2009 to more accurately represent university partnerships.

Cloud Services Interest Erupts in Groundswell

The anticipated benefits from adopting managed cloud services have reached the executives suites of many corporations. Proactive CEOs and CFOs are pushing their IT leadership team to seek out actionable information and guidance.

There's also a constant stream of service providers announcing new offerings -- and the momentum is becoming a global phenomenon. As a result, Forrester Research has witnessed an expanding number of client inquiries around cloud computing.

The acceleration in market development has been building for some time now. Forrester analysts responded to more than 264 client inquiries about cloud computing between January 2008 and April 1, 2009 from companies of all sizes and industries.

IT Teams are Adopting Cloud Strategies
Once considered a niche business technology where awareness was viewed as optional, Forrester now says that knowledge of cloud computing has become an IT organization necessity. Interest is fueled by expectations of major cost savings, scalable and dynamic environments, on-demand infrastructure, and much smaller maintenance requirements.

In a recent research note, Forrester outlined the most common questions about cloud services.

Twenty-three percent of cloud computing inquiries were about the types of applications that companies were moving into the cloud and how best to leverage cloud service environments. People want to know the spectrum of possibilities -- what apps to put in the cloud?

Some questions are motivated by the need for improved business agility. The promise of better scalability and versatility makes cloud services appealing. Moreover, innovation is often stifled by the investment needed to acquire and deploy new IT infrastructure and associated application environments.

Fifteen percent of the inquiries were on challenges, risks, and the effects of cloud-based services on IT -- such as, what are the typical use cases, and how much enterprise data should live in public clouds?

Clouds are Coexisting in Hybrid Models
Forrester believes questions regarding when to build internal clouds, and the "internal vs. external" debate, will be at the forefront of cloud computing due diligence in the coming months -- which cloud service scenario is a best-fit for our particular needs?

Forrester concluded from their client engagements that cloud computing represents a significant shift in the way IT operates today -- it's not a passing fad, it's a trend that's based upon solid business need for a change in the status quo.

The following are Forrester's recommendations:

• Know your costs, requirements, and potential areas for cost saving.
• Businesses with basic requirements can begin to pilot public clouds.
• Evaluate internal clouds, while also considering a hybrid model.
• Formulate standards, and a cloud policy to govern procurement.
  

As the momentum for managed cloud services continue to build in 2009, we'll be on the lookout for additional sources of insight.

Demand for Lean, Green Business Technology

According to a recent market study by Datamonitor, the current global economic recession may also prove to be a significant driver for Green Computing. Their market assessment raises lots of questions -- including, is it better for the world, and overall business profitability, if executives cut-back on their IT investments?

"The global economic recession has spurred a paradigm shift in the way organizations evaluate, budget for and deploy green IT," says Rhonda Ascierto, senior analyst at Datamonitor. "The downturn has also resulted in green IT trends for datacenters, client devices and asset lifecycle management, as well as re-shaped return on investment (ROI) models."

Datamonitor believes green IT that's intended to eliminate the need for capital expenditure -- such as datacenter virtualization, facility design and asset lifecycle management -- has become very important, especially as IT budgets are trimmed.

Lean and Green in 2009
Their research uncovered that lean IT budgets will likely be the norm in 2009, and that organizations will predominately seek green IT solutions because they're cost-effective. This represents a significant market trend, in their opinion.

Green ROI models are becoming compulsory and shorter. In order for green IT vendors to satisfy these new ROI requirements, they're being forced to develop more efficient solutions. However, when it comes to new IT equipment investments, if "less" is more, then "none" can be even better.

Business technology budget constraints force CIOs and IT managers to think beyond legacy approaches to a current problem. As a result, organizations that face critical datacenter limitations are already considering alternatives to building new datacenters or upgrading existing facilities.

Alternatives to IT Capital Investment
Those alternatives include IT leasing, managed services, virtualization software, cloud computing and software-as-a-service (SaaS). Datamonitor believes datacenter resources will increasingly be hosted in a cloud-based environment, which should -- at least theoretically, they say -- fall under the green IT banner.

Clearly, it really doesn't matter what you call your own concerted plan to reduce and contain operating expenses -- in contrast, what matters most is that you take appropriate action now.

Perhaps you're still wondering if the selective out-tasking of business technology is something that your executive team should act upon. If so, you might consider also reading the recent editorial in a mainstream business magazine entitled "The IT Companies Shouldn't Buy" and then ask yourself some of the same fundamental questions about your own business strategy.

Global Multi-tenant Service Provider Clouds

Multinational companies typically have more complex computing and networking technical support requirements, because their business technology applications can span over numerous locations with very diverse operations.

Business and IT leaders are currently exploring managed cloud service options, and they're comparing all new offerings from qualified service providers with international expertise.

BT, the UK-based provider of communications services, revealed that it will be launching a Virtual Data Centre (VDC) service in the coming months, supporting the needs large business and public sector organizations.

VDC provides a dynamic and virtualized infrastructure platform that enables their customers to consume IT and networking Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) -- it essentially forms the base for future cloud services.

BT says that VDC delivers the benefits of enterprise-class cloud computing to customers at a significant saving -- when compared with a standard hosted infrastructure deployment.

Appeal of Infrastructure as a Service
"Any Infrastructure as a Service offering that can provide a platform where organizations can scale their computing, network, and storage requirements in real-time, according to their needs, will have obvious appeal." said Roy Illsley, Senior Research Analyst at research company Butler Group.

Customers will be able to purchase virtualized components and access them over a pre-provisioned infrastructure. Virtual server, storage, security and networking capabilities will be available, automated and orchestrated through an online portal.

"BT is one of the very first movers in Europe with its Infrastructure as a Service offer and the only global provider that will be deploying this service across a vast network of data centers both in the UK and Europe," said Dustin Kehoe, Principal Analyst, Current Analysis.

"Other differentiators for BT include a strong central platform allowing customers to provision services on the fly and a solid professional services organization to support customers with higher end requirements."

Apparently, BT VDC is just one of a number of new offerings that will be announced by BT Global Services this year, focused on helping business customers achieve a competitive edge.

Demand for Cloud Internetworking
There's an emerging term used to describe hybrid scenarios -- when enterprise applications can seamlessly move between their internal and external clouds, leveraging the elasticity and multi-tenancy that a cloud infrastructure offers.

We'll be hearing more about the notion of a Virtual Private Inter-Cloud.

What's the primary benefit for your business? Cost reduction -- with a "pay as you grow" IT service. You eliminate capital investment and significantly reduce operational expenditure, while still maintaining secure control of your data.

Demand for Cloud Infrastructure as a Service

Some market studies continue to identify confusion regarding the true meaning of cloud-based services, and the apparent benefits derived by the early-adopters. One recent example comes from a survey of financial professionals in the UK.

However, there is already growing demand from informed executive business and IT decision makers that are eager to move forward with various forms of cloud service deployments.

In fact, Forrester Research has embarked on a new "Cloud and Virtualization Survey Data" series that offers key insights on where the market demand is developing, and they also debunk several stereotypes.

According to Forrester's assessment, Infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) offerings, one of the three types of cloud services, is an area of cloud computing that currently receives the most market attention. It centers on two forms of capability: 1) pay-per-use hosting of virtual servers at an external cloud service provider, and 2) operating an internal cloud, where your IT department offers virtual servers-as-a-service.

Enterprise Will Lead the Momentum
Forrester reviewed their latest survey data and uncovered the following indicators of likely buyer interest in, and adoption of, these two forms of IaaS:

• About 25% of all enterprises plan to adopt IaaS via an external service provider.
• Firms are slightly less interested in internal clouds than they are in external IaaS.
• Large business respondents report more awareness, interest, and adoption of external IaaS than small business -- they also report the same for internal clouds.
  

Forrester defines the three layers of the cloud services stack as follows:

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) - End user applications, delivered as a service rather than as on-premise software.
Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) - Application platform or middleware-as-a-service on which developers can build and operate custom applications.
Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) - Compute-, storage-, or other IT infrastructure-as-a-service, rather than as dedicated capability.

Once again, pay-per-use hosting of virtual servers and internal cloud are part of infrastructure-as-a-service.

Cloud Service Adoption Drivers
Forrester reached an interesting conclusion from their market assessment -- that's contrary to conventional wisdom regarding the initial demand for cloud services. Enterprises are leading the adoption, not small and medium sized businesses (SMBs). Moreover, they have different technology preferences and comfort levels with virtualization.

Forrester also believes that early adopters of IaaS service offerings are driven by the instant provisioning of servers and the pay-per-use pricing model. Furthermore, the enterprise IT operations buyers, unlike developer buyers, may want to integrate their on-premise infrastructure with anything they deploy to a service provider, either temporarily or permanently.

Verizon Cloud-Based Computing as a Service

Verizon Business introduced an on-demand, cloud-based Computing as a Service (CaaS) solution -- designed to meet the stringent security and performance requirements of their enterprise customers.

This new offering helps businesses take advantage of cloud (IP-based) computing to more efficiently and securely manage IT computing resources -- server, network and storage -- to meet day-to-day business demands.

This CaaS solution, which leverages Verizon's global IP infrastructure and data centers, enables companies to use a Web-based portal to employ computing resources in the quantities and duration dictated by their own business needs.

As a result, businesses pay for the resources used and avoid having to build out for peak capacity requirements by buying new equipment and adding IT or networking staff.

Designed for mid-to-large-sized businesses, CaaS is ideal for new development projects, major events and migrations so that organization can easily and quickly shift IT resources as required.

Just-in-Time Computing Resources
It is also well suited for businesses with seasonal demands such as retailers, companies holding annual benefit enrollments or sales promotions that drive incremental traffic to Web sites. The service is immediately available in the U.S. and Europe, and then will be introduced to the Asia-Pacific region in August.

Verizon's Mike Marcellin explains in a video commentary some of the key features and benefits.

Melanie Posey, research director, hosting & telecom services at IDC said "Verizon has incorporated a number of key elements that make this solution a stand-out in the marketplace. The CaaS combination of flexibility, security, performance and resiliency is well positioned to serve certain enterprise requirements in a nimble, next-generation fashion."

Clearly, we can anticipate that the forward-looking managed and hosted service providers will continue to launch innovative new managed cloud service offerings that meet the selective IT out-tasking needs of their customers.

Public, Hosted, and Internal Clouds Defined

Like any new business technology, the early development of cloud services can be a little confusing -- as some descriptions are still open to interpretation. However, the dialog is helpful, because it enables us to focus on the true business value of data center resources.

According to Forrester Research, cloud computing platforms are more than shared multi-tenant infrastructures on the public Internet. There are three infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) cloud deployment options available; each has unique characteristics and economics.

Forrester’s three cloud service scenarios follow:

Which cloud service scenario is a best-fit for your business needs? Well, that depends upon a number of related factors -- such as your organizational bias for direct control, sensitivity to risk, and overall usage requirements for a cloud computing platform.

Public Cloud Scenario
Public clouds are easily accessible, multi-tenant virtualized infrastructures that are managed via a self-service portal. They deliver superior economies of scale to customers, as the infrastructure costs are spread among all users, giving each individual client an attractive low-cost, pay-per-use model.

They are managed and supported by the cloud provider and are typically homogeneous, meaning all customers share the same pool of infrastructure with limited configuration, security protections, and availability variances.

Internal Cloud Scenario
Internal clouds have similar characteristics of a public cloud, but hosted within your own data center. They leverage more of your standard processes and protections, but tend to be limited in size and scale. Your IT organization must incur the full capital and operational costs for the physical resources.

They are best for applications where you want complete control and configurability of the infrastructure and security. This most often applies to applications that manage sensitive information that is subject to strict compliance standards.

Hosted Cloud Scenario
Hosted clouds are hybrids -- a multi-tenant cloud atop rented resources, but dedicated to a single client. They help you avoid the capital and operational expense of an internal cloud, growing and shrinking the size of the cloud as needed by simply renting more resources (often added via a pay-per-use model) but providing more custom SLAs.

They give you more flexibility, where you can adjust the security as needed, specify the infrastructure elements to be used, the SLA to be applied, and set other constraints not available on a shared public cloud.

Plus, the cloud is managed by a Service Provider -- rather than your IT team. However, the economics of hosted clouds are more like managed hosting than public clouds -- since the servers that make up the cloud are typically fully dedicated to you.

Evolutionary Pathway to Cloud Services
Forrester concludes that cloud services are infrastructure deployment options that help businesses better match the needs of the application with computing resources. It’s the integration between these infrastructures that delivers the greatest value.

The goal is to speed IT service delivery, while reducing costs. Therefore, consider all options. Ask your service provider to explain their offerings, and if they can provide a pathway to virtual private cloud services -- between your data center and their cloud infrastructure.

Discover the Pathway to Cloud Services

Do you have your head in the clouds? Well, if so, then you're surely not alone. In breaking news, eWeek reports that Cisco Systems is pulling together key pieces of its data center and networking portfolios to create a blueprint for building a cloud computing infrastructure for service providers.

Is this yet another business technology hype-cycle, or is there something truly remarkable occurring that builds upon the escalating widespread adoption of IT managed service and hosting service offerings?

Cisco's Simon Aspinall provides the context for the launch of the Unified Service Delivery solution, as he shares an analogy that explains why innovation sometimes requires starting the design process from a totally different point of view.

The cloud computing phenomenon is generating a lot of interest worldwide because of its potential to offer services on-demand -- at lower cost than current options, and with significantly less complexity, greater scalability, and wider reach.

Motivation for Cloud Services Adoption
A study by the University of California, Berkeley entitled "Above the Clouds: A Berkeley View of Cloud Computing" looked at cloud computing from the end-user perspective. It focused on three features that are major advancements for you, the business and IT decision maker:

• The illusion of infinite computer resources available on demand that eliminate the need for you to plan far ahead for provisioning.
• No need for an up-front commitment by your business, allowing you to start small and increase your use of cloud services as needed.
• The pay-as-you-go model that allows you to buy just what they need, and what you can budget, either on a short-term or ongoing basis.
  

The study also emphasized that companies with large batch-oriented computing tasks can get results more quickly and cost-effectively than ever before when using the broad resources of a managed cloud services provider for a short period of time.

Cloud Service Call to Action
The on-demand nature of cloud computing is also a productivity boon to both the enterprise CEO and the CIO, allowing them to quickly react to changing market conditions and opportunities. Are you ready to out-task your next IT or enterprise networking related project?

If you need to gain a deeper understanding of how this emerging space of new business technology is developing, then consider the "Working in the Cloud" Industry Round-Up Report series from THINKstrategies.

Building perspective and getting voted "Best Mid-Market Solution" at the Mid-sized Enterprise Summit

I was among a team of Googlers who recently attended the Mid-sized Enterprise Summit in Miami, Florida. We enjoyed the sunshine, industry speakers, and above all the chance to talk with CIOs and IT leads from companies across a range of industries. Given the economy, the cost savings available through Google Apps gained a lot of interest.

But we probably got the most "oohs" and "aahs" when we demoed our collaboration apps (Google Docs, including data processing and spreadsheets, Google Sites, for easy web publishing, and Google Video, for secure video sharing). We're always satisfied when we see "the light go on" as newcomers to these products realize what they enable that just isn't available with traditional desktop apps.

Geoffrey Moore set the context for the conference, and indeed, for our message with Google Apps. The well-known author of Crossing the Chasm discussed how the internet has changed the way we can do business. He encouraged audience members to rethink work that doesn't provide any strategic business differentiation for companies – email administration, software upgrade management, things like that. Instead, he emphasized that IT's unique opportunity to help their companies fuel innovation and gain productivity by "investing in the core business to amplify differentiation." According to Moore, this differentiation, and the innovation it enables, is a key lever for doing well during a downtown.

In one of our breakout sessions, we shared one example of how a business might invest in its core by showing resource site built by Home Care Assistance (HCA), an internationally-franchised provider of in-home caregivers. Using Google Sites, HCA created a series of pages that help new franchisees come on board with the information they need to become effective representatives of the HCA brand and philosophy.

HCA's online resource center consolidates knowledge
and spreads best practices.

Instead of spending time getting new offices set up on standalone technology – servers, local IT teams, things like that – HCA corporate has leveraged the power of cloud computing, using Google Apps, to focus its effort on sharing business strategies, techniques for recruiting and screening of caregivers, and refining leading-edge online marketing techniques. Home Care Assistance has not only consolidated its knowledge into this secure intranet but also provided the means for its field offices to share best practices with eachother – blogging about how best to optimize an AdWords budget, for example. This type of collaboration would be resource-intensive, or maybe even impossible, with a static-intranet model where IT would push information out to end users. Home Care Assistance hasaccelerated productivity with this approach and has also fostered wider collaboration amongst its field offices. Using Google Apps, Home Care Assistance has grown 15-fold in less than four years, and has recently expanded into Canada (giving the firm even more ways to integrate Google products!).

HCA makes it easy for people to find office locations
by listing them in a Google Docs spreadsheet and inserting a
Google Maps Gadget into a Google Site.

In another session, we asked people to go hands-on to demonstrate the easy productivity available with Google Apps. Using the forms that are built in to Google Spreadsheets, we captured input from the audience in a survey covering things like the how they communicate with users, responses to presentations, and input on topics and content. This let us show easy, visual summaries of information, displaying answers in charts available to audience members as easily as opening up a browser.

Mid-sized Enterprise Summit attendees filled out a form and saw
how the data filled a spreadsheet and displayed in a graph

We had a great time meeting with customers and understanding how Google Apps can help mid-sized businesses achieve their objectives. We were also grateful to conference participants for voting us the "Best Mid-Market Solution" in Services. The event organizers did a great job and we look forward to seeing you in the fall at the west coast version of the Summit.

Posted by Ben Salzman, Enterprise Sales Team

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Demand for IT Managed Cloud Services

Business technology has gone through several major changes over the decades. Each transformation brought new ways to perform work -- it also allowed some organizations to leapfrog over their less-agile competition.

"Today's CEO concerns provide an advanced look at what will become CIO priorities in six to 18 months," said Jorge Lopez, vice president at Gartner, Inc. The focus for the IT agenda in the face of economic uncertainty and risk is flexibility, and renewed business agility.

According to Gartner's assessment, CIOs need to ensure that their IT operations are ready for the ongoing challenges and shifts that are sure to emerge.

Defined as the ability to achieve financial and strategic plans, effectiveness gives enterprises the flexibility to meet challenge with change. So, how will CIOs improve effectiveness to meet new economic and operational challenges?

Business Imperative for Cloud-based Services
IT leaders are increasingly being asked to move all non-strategic IT functions to the cloud; to develop IT core competencies and skills to manage virtual resources; and to embrace new applications that capitalize on cloud computing, collaboration, mobility and social media.

Worldwide cloud services revenue will reach $56.3 billion in 2009, a 21.3 percent increase from 2008, according to the latest study by Gartner. The market is expected to reach $150.1 billion in 2013.

Much of the cloud computing news centers on systems infrastructure as a service (IaaS). In 2008, these services accounted for only 5.5 percent of the overall cloud services market and are forecast to reach 6 percent in 2009.

"Cloud-based infrastructure services are expected to see significant adoption through 2013," said Ben Pring, vice president at Gartner. "This segment probably has the largest range of possible outcomes, depending on how aggressively cloud computing is embraced."

Cloud application services, evolving from software as a service (SaaS) offerings, were almost twice as large as the market for systems infrastructure and will continue to show strong growth.

Lower Cost Drives Cloud Services Growth
Over the next five years an increasing array of application functionality will become available as IT managed cloud services -- to supplement those current cloud applications.

"The IT market trends for the next couple of years remain highly uncertain. While short-term growth is expected to be inhibited, the potentially lower cost of cloud services is attractive to customers and will drive growth for these offerings," said Mr. Pring.

Given that backdrop, what new demand are you experiencing for cloud-based services? Are you reaching out to service providers, to learn more about their evolving on-demand service offerings?

Exciting, useful sessions at Google I/O...be there!

The Google I/O Developer Conference is coming up in just four weeks, on May 27 – 28, 2009 in San Francisco, California, so we thought now would be a good time to give you a sneak preview into some of the exciting Enterprise sessions we have planned.

Growing a SaaS-based services business reselling Google Apps
presented by Jeff Ragusa

Traditional value-added resellers are looking for ways to adapt their business for the world of cloud computing and the new Google Apps Authorized Reseller program provides the perfect framework for moving a services business in this direction. This session will focus on revenue opportunities for partners in this area ranging from assisting with SaaS product selection, to guidance on best practices, to custom application development, deployment & integration work, and managed services. Learn how Google's reseller program can enable service providers to take advantage of these opportunities through marketing, sales and technical tools and resources. See Jeff's video invitation to his session here.

Extending the Google Search Appliance to Crawl Valuable Data Behind the Firewell
presented by Nitin Mangtani

The Google Search Appliance is an on-premise hardware and software solution that brings Google search into the enterprise, so users can find content quickly and securely. In this session, learn how partners today are plugging enterprise data sources into the GSA through Connectors and displaying results using OneBox. See Nitin's video invitation to his session here.

OpenSocial in the Enterprise
presented by Chris Schalk, Mark Wentzel, Dave Carroll, Rich Manalang, and Tugdual Grall

With OpenSocial's proven global success in traditional social applications, the enterprise software community has begun to realize its potential and build innovative solutions that cater to the enterprise. Join us for a session centered on how the enterprise software development community is successfully bringing social concepts and technology into the enterprise. Key enterprise players will present and demonstrate how they've successfully used OpenSocial software to build new social solutions.

One last thing to remember: even though Google I/O will be primarily geared around breakout sessions, there will be a ton of other interesting stuff going on, including the Developer Sandbox, Fireside Chats, Tech Talks and After Hours Playground. Click here to register.

Posted by Chris Kelly, Google Apps Partners team