Cloud Computing

"According to leading analyst firms such as Gartner, cloud computing is the number one technology area that IT departments should focus on during 2010 – that’s up from a third place ranking in 2009, when virtualisation and business intelligence were considered to be more important."

"There’s clearly a lot of hype around cloud at the moment. A recent Gartner report, for example, suggested that the global cloud market will be worth $150 billion by 2013. Well maybe, but - as with many of these predictions – the reality is likely to be much more conservative!

There’s also a certain amount of uncertainty about what a cloud computing solution actually involves. Gartner believes that a cloud computing implementation should feature five key characteristics: it should be service-based, scalable according to user requirements, take advantage of a common shared platform, feature payment by usage, and take advantage of IP as the service delivery mechanism.

Taking this definition, it’s easy to see why people sometimes confuse cloud with other IT approaches such as virtualised services, infrastructure-as-a-service, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and other on-demand offerings. However, it’s these potentially broad definitions that give cloud computing its strength.

What’s certain is that cloud is clearly attracting a lot of industry attention – couple that with its ability to deliver real value for many businesses - and cloud is likely to be around for some while.

Playing directly to Maxima’s strengths
For some organisations, a cloud implementation might simply be taking advantage of an online service to scan their e-mails and filter content: for others it could involve a much more comprehensive applications-based service, virtualised across multiple data centres, accessed using a self-service portal, and paid for on a usage basis.

What’s interesting about these two styles of cloud deployments – and of all the different stages in between – is that they all require a wide range of IT, communications, networking, infrastructure and applications skills to operate effectively. And that’s why ‘cloud’ plays directly to Maxima’s strengths.

Among our 1,400-strong customer base we’re still seeing a wide range of opinions about cloud - from enthusiastic supporters who are entirely comfortable with trusting their applications and data to a cloud environment, to more conservative IT management teams that still have real concerns about security and privacy concerns. We’re of course happy to support both approaches, or help organisations adopt a hybrid approach to cloud where that’s more appropriate.

Enabling cloud computing with Maxima
Here at Maxima we can deliver the entire infrastructure that an organisation might need for a successful cloud project. Our offering covers all the Internet communications, resilient data centres, the hosting, the storage and virtualisation capabilities; we also provide all the applications you might need, whether it’s Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, IBM or from our own suite of specialist applications, and we can back all this with our proven Managed Services capability, allowing comprehensive 24/7 infrastructure-as-a-service cloud solutions on demand.

It’s rare that all these capabilities sit within the same business, and our deep sector expertise means we can help our customers systematically remove any connectivity, availability, scalability or security barriers to cloud computing success that remain in their way.

Our approach is to give organisations the support they need, providing them with the choice to do what’s best for their business, whether it’s evolving towards a comprehensive on-demand service with virtualised services delivered in the cloud, or pursuing a more traditional in-house IT architecture with resources remaining firmly behind the corporate firewall.

We’re finding that there isn’t a single, right approach to cloud. For example, with one of our customers we’re working to support them with an infrastructure as a service solution – managing their server farm and firewalls, but leaving them to concentrate on their online applications skills where they believe their IT team can deliver the best value and differentiation for their business.

Supporting the right choices
Because Maxima can deliver all aspects of a cloud solution we can give our customers the freedom to ask all the right questions – such as “what services should we own and run ourselves, and which would be better off outsourcing or operating as part of a managed infrastructure?” Whatever the answer, Maxima can help."