Simplifying and Accelerating the Transition to Hybrid Cloud Environments. By Mark Bowker, Senior Analyst and Bob Laliberte, Senior Analyst

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1 White Paper Simplifying and Accelerating the Transition to Hybrid Cloud Environments Cisco Intercloud Fabric By Mark Bowker, Senior Analyst and Bob Laliberte, Senior Analyst August 2014 This ESG White Paper was commissioned by Cisco and is distributed under license from ESG.

2 White Paper: Simplifying and Accelerating the Transition to Hybrid Clouds Environments 2 Contents The Rise of Hybrid Clouds... 3 Challenges That Could Hinder Hybrid Cloud Adoption... 5 Heterogeneous Virtualization Environments... 5 Achieving Universal Network Access with Seamless Connectivity to Public Clouds... 6 Striking the Right Cloud Balance... 6 Security and Compliance Concerns... 6 Cloud Vendor Lock-in... 6 Cisco Intercloud Fabric Accelerates Hybrid Cloud Adoption... 7 The Value of Cisco Intercloud Fabric... 8 Intercloud Fabric Value Proposition... 8 Intercloud Fabric Value Summary... 9 The Bigger Truth... 9 All trademark names are property of their respective companies. Information contained in this publication has been obtained by sources The Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) considers to be reliable but is not warranted by ESG. This publication may contain opinions of ESG, which are subject to change from time to time. This publication is copyrighted by The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. Any reproduction or redistribution of this publication, in whole or in part, whether in hard-copy format, electronically, or otherwise to persons not authorized to receive it, without the express consent of The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc., is in violation of U.S. copyright law and will be subject to an action for civil damages and, if applicable, criminal prosecution. Should you have any questions, please contact ESG Client Relations at

3 White Paper: Simplifying and Accelerating the Transition to Hybrid Clouds Environments 3 The Rise of Hybrid Clouds Enterprises are rapidly adopting cloud computing solutions in order to meet dynamically changing business requirements. These solutions are typically comprised of both private and public cloud deployments, resulting in the creation of hybrid clouds that are designed to rapidly scale up and down in response to user demands, and they provide the advantages of elastic computing economics. In order to benefit from this environment, businesses need to connect with these hybrid clouds more easily from their heterogeneous bases, and balance the need for compliance and control against the need to rapidly innovate and the ability to scale as required. This presents a complex integration challenge for IT organizations. As a result, they increasingly find themselves brokering cloud services as opposed to creating an all-private cloud environment. Despite their best attempts to implement these and other services throughout their enterprises, however, IT is having a difficult time keeping up with the demand for solutions. As a result, lines of business are making their own purchasing decisions, and bypassing IT organizations when they fail to provide the tools required to meet their objectives in the timeframe requested a movement commonly known as shadow IT. These lines of business have increasingly more influence on buying decisions, and they are more informed about technology options than in the past. This is destabilizing corporate IT organizations and undermining long-term business goals. Figure 1 presents ESG research findings on the impact non-it stakeholders have on technology purchase decisions. 1 Figure 1. Impact of Non-IT Stakeholders on Technology Purchase Decisions Source: Enterprise Strategy Group, In response to these growing pressures, IT is deploying more flexible and scalable private and public clouds, offering multiple consumption models that include both on-premises and off-premises utilization of cloud services. For example, public cloud consumption has gained tremendous momentum, as is evidenced by ESG research showing that 90% of respondents use or have plans for public cloud (see Figure 2), and 70% use or plan to use infrastructureas-a-service. 2 Users are also increasingly turning to multiple public cloud providers, which provides them with more choices, but complicates their requirements for effectively managing these different cloud environments all at the same time. 1 Source: ESG Research Report, 2014 IT Spending Intentions Survey, February Source: ESG Research Report, 2014 Public Cloud Computing Trends, March 2014.

4 White Paper: Simplifying and Accelerating the Transition to Hybrid Clouds Environments 4 Figure 2. Plans for Public Cloud Computing Services What are your organization's plans for public cloud computing services? (Percent of respondents) Midmarket (100 to 999 employees, N=213) Enterprise (1,000 or more employees, N=349) Total (N=562) 80% 70% 60% 62% 75% 70% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% We currently use a cloud computing service 24% 18% 20% We have plans for or interest in cloud computing services 13% 6% 8% We have no plans or interest in using cloud computing services 1% 1% Don't know 1% Source: Enterprise Strategy Group, Private cloud growth is also expanding, as 70% of ESG survey respondents say they either have or plan to deploy a private cloud (see Figure 3). 3 Figure 3. Private Cloud Deployment Would you consider your organization to have a private cloud infrastructure? (Percent of respondents, N=303) No, and we have no plans to deploy a private cloud infrastructure, 13% Don t know, 1% No, but we are interested in a private cloud infrastructure, 16% Yes, 50% No, but we have plans to deploy a private cloud infrastructure, 20% Source: Enterprise Strategy Group, Source: ESG Research Report, Trends in Private Cloud Infrastructure, April 2014.

5 White Paper: Simplifying and Accelerating the Transition to Hybrid Clouds Environments 5 So, what do organizations want from their private clouds? ESG research validates what are already believed to be critical characteristics of successful private cloud infrastructures universal network access with seamless connectivity to public cloud resources and rapid elasticity. 4 The research shows that greater than 50% of organizations cite these two as the most critical attributes of cloud infrastructures. It is important to note that seamless connectivity to public cloud resources illustrates the need for hybrid cloud environments and ties in to the need for an elastic environment. Figure 4. Most Important Attributes of a Private Cloud Which of the five essential characteristics of cloud computing do you believe is the most important attribute of a private cloud infrastructure? (Percent of respondents, N=260) Measured service (i.e., usage-based tracking/billing), 10% On-demand selfservice, 15% Rapid elasticity (i.e., ability to add or remove IT resources as needed), 34% Resource pooling, 20% Universal network access with seamless connectivity to public cloud resources, 20% Challenges That Could Hinder Hybrid Cloud Adoption Source: Enterprise Strategy Group, Despite efforts to transform, IT organizations still find themselves unable to deliver the response required by the business due to various challenges, which include the following: Heterogeneous Virtualization Environments ESG research reveals that 55% of organizations use or plan to have a multi-hypervisor strategy, which on one hand indicates the growing parity among vendors, but on the other is a trend that may also strongly influence which public cloud environments users choose. 5 Using multiple public clouds to accommodate specific internal environments limits flexibility and increases complexity for such things as compliance, control, and security, which flies in the face of demands for easier-to-use products and services. This can create a cascading effect that forces users to reconfigure their apps and limits their visibility and control over the growth of infrastructure dependencies. It also creates doubt: Will your VMware environment plug into Microsoft Azure? Will your Hyper-V-based private cloud work with VMware s vcloud Hybrid Service? 4 Ibid. 5 Source: ESG Research Report, Trends in Private Cloud Infrastructure, April 2014.

6 White Paper: Simplifying and Accelerating the Transition to Hybrid Clouds Environments 6 Achieving Universal Network Access with Seamless Connectivity to Public Clouds Incompatibility issues caused by heterogeneous virtualization environments also have a negative impact on the quest for universal network access. In fact, only 21% of ESG research respondents say they are making excellent progress in this key area despite it being one of the top requirements and characteristics that they want. 6 The siloed infrastructures that result from these multi-vendor environments lead to inconsistent cloud architectures, fragmented solutions for solving networking and security challenges, and the need for different, more unified management tools. Striking the Right Cloud Balance At this point in the cloud evolution, there is perception that everything should be put in public clouds because there is a widespread belief that this approach is the most cost-effective. Indeed, increasing the use of cloud computing services as an alternative to in-house applications and/or infrastructure was the third most common response when ESG surveyed respondents to list which measures their organizations were taking to reduce or otherwise contain IT expenditures. 7 The reality is that completely committing to private or public clouds is prohibitively expensive. All or nothing is not the answer. In order to optimally balance the use of private and public clouds as well as optimize expenses, the right strategy is to use the public cloud for applications or workloads that scale up and down on a temporary basis, i.e., determine a strategy based on workloads that can effectively scale up and down from public clouds while retaining consistent policies. For example, there are circumstances like seasonal demand for which seamlessly augmenting the capacity of users private cloud infrastructures with public clouds is the right choice. However, it is important to note that managing multiple cloud environments can be complex depending on workloads. Therefore, there is real demand for a system that enables IT organizations to quickly and easily manage workloads across multiple clouds with the flexibility of programmable APIs or a GUI portal and a single pane of glass. Security and Compliance Concerns Security and compliance is now a CEO-level concern that should be elevated to a top corporate priority as part of a policy-based deployment strategy to ensure successful corporate governance and compliance in public cloud environments. This need is reflected in ESG s research, which shows that security concerns are the most-cited issue preventing more pervasive usage or initial adoption of cloud computing services. 8 Those concerns include unsecured connections and limited workload protection. According to recent ESG research, regulatory compliance is a top ten priority. 9 Given the mission-critical importance of security and compliance, organizations should be asking themselves two questions: First, how can we be sure public cloud deployment complies with our enterprise security and compliance policies and processes? And second, how can we incorporate centralized access control (typically provided by active directory) into public cloud deployments? The compliance policy and process complexity is exacerbated further as multiple lines of business pursue their own cloud deployments, leading to separate, disconnected pools of enterprise workloads even if the lines of business use the same cloud vendor. This is another area that calls for the seamless extension of private cloud networks to public clouds so that security and compliance policies will have high visibility across corporate networks, and can be managed effectively across them all. Cloud Vendor Lock-in Public clouds offer flexibility and scalability, but they also raise concerns related to vendor lock-in. This can become a serious problem over time as features, functionality, and pricing change forcing organizations to adapt and 6 Source: Ibid. 7 Source: ESG Research Report, 2014 IT Spending Intentions Survey, February Source: ESG Research Report, 2013 Public Cloud Computing Trends, March Source: ESG Research Report, 2014 IT Spending Intentions Survey, February 2014.

7 White Paper: Simplifying and Accelerating the Transition to Hybrid Clouds Environments 7 preventing them from creating their own cloud scenarios. And even if organizations can free themselves from vendor lock-in, changing clouds is still a costly, time-consuming task that may lead to onerous work such as rewriting applications. These challenges only get more complex and pervasive as organizations use multiple public cloud vendors and must manage a multi-cloud strategy depending on geography, workloads, etc. Especially in these situations, the ability to manage a multi-cloud strategy with a single point of management is critical. It is clear from these challenges that when it comes to implementing hybrid clouds, organizations need solutions that enable them to work with any private or public cloud technology, provide seamless connectivity without compromising security and compliance, and allow them to retain control over their networks. A misperception among IT professionals is that cloud computing transacts over the busy Internet. As businesses accelerate the plans and usage of cloud consumption models, they must enable architectures that support and enhance seamless network access and deliver the reliability, performance, and security required. Cisco Intercloud Fabric Accelerates Hybrid Cloud Adoption Cisco s deep understanding and breadth of solutions for networking, private cloud, and public cloud provides it with the experience and skills required to deliver a comprehensive solution that accelerates hybrid cloud adoption. Based on this extensive expertise, Cisco developed Intercloud Fabric for Business, a software-only solution to connect users data centers and private clouds to public cloud environments. The solution will facilitate the transition to hybrid clouds and provide organizations with greater flexibility and agility while maintaining consistency of network and security policies. There is also an Intercloud Fabric for Providers version of the software application that enables service providers to offer hybrid cloud deployments to their customers without the need of developing public cloud APIs. In short, this product is the seamless connection from any private cloud to any public cloud. The solution architecture consists of several components. The first component of this system is Intercloud Fabric Director, a single-pane-of-glass management solution providing administrator and end-user self-service portals through a web-based interface. Administrators can set up a catalogue of virtual machine templates that users can select from and provision. It provides authentication and role-based access control, multi-tenancy support, and workload placement policies. In addition to a UI for both end-users and IT admins, it features open APIs that can extend to other management platforms. Policy-based cloud management ensures consistent performance. Other components of Cisco Intercloud Fabric are: Intercloud Fabric Secure Extender: A virtual machine in an enterprise data center private cloud that provides secure Layer 2 extension to provider cloud. All the traffic between the private and public cloud is cryptographically secured as is the traffic inside the provider cloud. Since the workload migration uses a Layer 2 overlay, all network policies extend consistently and transparently to the public cloud. The solution includes a virtual zone-based firewall and virtual routing services package running in the provider cloud so the security and network policy rules seamlessly follow the workload as it moves from the private to public cloud. Intercloud Fabric Provider Platform: This is only required for the Provider Edition. It enables service providers without public APIs to integrate with Intercloud Fabric. It abstracts cloud provider infrastructures, features open APIs, and enables providers to rapidly deploy hybrid cloud services.

8 White Paper: Simplifying and Accelerating the Transition to Hybrid Clouds Environments 8 Figure 5. Cisco Intercloud Architecture Source: Cisco, In this process, Intercloud Extender encapsulates private cloud network traffic and securely sends it across a WAN to the Intercloud Switch running on infrastructure-as-a-service software in the public cloud. The traffic is then unwrapped and delivered to its destination without the need to rewrite applications, disrupt seamless workloads portability, or change IP addresses. By taking advantage of this solution, enterprises can leverage multiple cloud providers to suit their individual requirements, and providers can quickly onboard customers. Cisco is counting on those capabilities to play a major role in helping Intercloud Fabric become the market-leading cloud connection solution by building an ecosystem of providers who will deploy Intercloud Fabric for Providers whether they be public hyperscale clouds such as Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services EC2; private clouds from VMware, Citrix, OpenStack, and Red Hat; or business partners such as Dimension Data, British Telecom, and Virtustream. Based on Intercloud Fabric s architecture and innovative approach, it wouldn t be a stretch to see this solution being able to integrate with other technologies like Cisco s Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) for data centers, creating some interesting potential opportunities. The Value of Cisco Intercloud Fabric Intercloud Fabric Value Proposition The value of Intercloud Fabric is having flexibility of choice when it comes to having private or public cloud options that do not lock in users. Companies that view cloud as a cost containment measure need to make choices based on their workloads, whether it is AWS high-performance computing or Oracle databases. The simplicity of this system is the way it connects private clouds to public clouds and enables users to go back and forth between them without implementing massive changes. There is no need to change security or networking settings getting connected is easy and quick and there is no need to re-architect existing apps in order to reach the cloud. From a manageability perspective, Intercloud Fabric provides the abilities to manage workloads across multiple clouds via a single user interface, work with multiple public cloud providers, and rapidly burst to the cloud when necessary. Business seasonality and dealing with planned down time are use cases where the right balance of public and private clouds provides the best results. Organizations can seamlessly extend their private workloads to public clouds when maintenance is being performed, and then move them back when that work is finished. Disaster

9 White Paper: Simplifying and Accelerating the Transition to Hybrid Clouds Environments 9 recovery is yet another beneficial example of using public clouds for backup. This balanced, scale-up and scaledown approach across multi-cloud environments which is seamlessly and rapidly possible with Intercloud Fabric comprises a cost-effective strategy that contributes to increased ROIs and stimulates business process improvements. In summary, Cisco s hybrid cloud approach provides: The elimination of vendor lock-in. Any hypervisor to any provider service. Heterogeneous infrastructure. End-to-end security. Unified workload management and governance. Workload mobility across clouds. Intercloud Fabric Value Summary Flexibility Intercloud Fabric gives users the freedom to place their workloads across heterogeneous environments in a consistent manner so they are an extension of their private cloud. Private cloud options include Microsoft, VMware, Citrix, Red Hat, and OpenStack. Public cloud options include AWS, Microsoft Azure, BT, Dimension Data, and Virtustream. Simplicity With Intercloud Fabric, there are no changes to security or networking policies. Intercloud Fabric consistently provides these systems as an extension of the private cloud. It also allows rapid connection among private and public clouds with no need to rewrite applications. Manageability Intercloud Fabric provides unified workload management across clouds via a GUI portal, as well as the ability to manage multiple cloud providers and burst to the cloud when needed. This will allow customers to identify the best cloud deployment framework for their workloads without compromising compliance and control. Security Intercloud Fabric leverages policy-based deployment and enables corporate governance in the cloud. The Bigger Truth Hybrid clouds are rapidly becoming a reality and shadow IT lines of business have been ratcheting up the pressure on IT organizations to meet their demands for these cutting-edge products and services on their timetable. What began as a rogue rebellion has become an increasingly legitimized, tacitly approved movement as business units regularly circumvent IT to procure their technology infrastructures externally. This is not only destabilizing the traditional IT model that has reigned supreme for some 50 years, but is also threatening to replace it entirely with a more decentralized, user-driven approach. In response to this insurrection, which is partly driven by cloud capabilities such as elasticity and scalability, IT is attempting to build out more scalable, flexible, simple, manageable, and secure private infrastructures, but organizations are also leveraging public clouds. Driven by this churn of change, hybrid clouds are rapidly emerging as enterprises shift from being cloud developers to cloud brokers. Unfortunately, these private clouds are not fulfilling their potential because they are largely incompatible with the growing array of public clouds. Enter Cisco Intercloud Fabric a solution that delivers. It enables organizations to go to heterogeneous public clouds more easily from a heterogeneous private cloud base. This new product strikes the right balance between private and public clouds by seamlessly extending private cloud networks along with their attendant policies and security requirements to the public cloud. It enables users to transparently scale up and down elastically on a temporary basis, avoiding vendor lock-in, creating improved ROI and cost efficiencies, and streamlining management from a single pane of glass.

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