Hybrid IT for SMBs is changing the role of IT.
(Guest blog by Kane Micheletti of desktopsites, Inc)
The IT world is changing more rapidly than ever; each new technology provides new capabilities which in turn present exciting new opportunities for providers and their channels. The marketing world is buzzing with new terms like Cloud Computing, BYOD and Hybrid IT as the technologies they represent first became possible and now have become available.
At the same time, the SMB Hybrid IT market is a massive emerging market and which is growing at an incredible rate. SMBs require the same functionality as their large enterprise counterparts, however, due to limited budgets and technical knowhow, they need a solution that has been designed and priced specifically for them.
The solution needs to incorporate native technologies that enable full functionality without having to invest a ton of time and resource into 6 month implementations.
So what does it take to capture this massive emerging SMB market? Innovation: Cisco Hybrid IT style.
Cisco Konect Hybrid IT for SMBs
Hybrid IT is a technique in which a business uses both in-house and cloud-based services to complete their entire pool of IT resources. A hybrid IT model enables businesses to lease a portion of their required IT resources from a public/private cloud service provider.
Hybrid Cloud empowers a business by provisioning their IT resources from the cloud and gain the cost effectiveness and flexibility offered by cloud vendors while still having full control over certain resources that they might not want to expose to the cloud.
The Challenge: SMBs require simple, effective, affordable solutions that provide Large Enterprise functionality.
SMB Hybrid IT Market Overview:
- Target Market: Small and mid-size businesses (2 - 999 users) with a primary focus on the sub 500 user base.
- Market Challenge: "Small businesses are facing operational challenges stemming from persistent data growth, budgetary constraints and the need to produce more with less, which is driving adoption of cloud computing, data analytics and mobility similar to their enterprise counterparts." (April 30, 2015 -- Joe Rizzo -- Cloud & Hybrid business continuity solutions will se more investments from SMBs')
- Market Need: Cloud and Hybrid IT Business Continuity solutions for SMBs
"While many businesses today may have at least one cloud-based solution in place, the remainder falls well short of placing everything in the cloud. As a result, SMBs will have a need for a hybrid model to be in place." (Feb 3, 2015 -- Nick East, Zynstra -- Why hybrid IT could be just right for small business)
"… for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), an affordable hybrid solution that offers the infrastructure they need has been elusive."(Feb 3, 2015 -- Nick East, Zynstra -- Why hybrid IT could be just right for small business)
IDC (April 2015 -- The Growth Opportunity for SMB Cloud and Hybrid Business Continuity -- Carbonite) has found that SMBs, unlike enterprises, need business solutions that are:
- Holistic -- providing a range of business services.
- Simple -- eliminating infrastructure and operational complexity -- simple, intuitive, easy-to-deploy and manage business services.
- Cost effective -- must be an economically viable fit (reduced capex) with a typical SMB business budget.
- Cloud enabled -- meeting public &/or hybrid cloud deployment requirements.
- Offer Enterprise-Grade Features -- designed and priced for SMBs.
Market Opportunity
The worldwide cloud systems management software market will total $5.8 billion in 2018, up from $1.8 billion in 2013. This represents a 2013-2018 CAGR of 26.6%. (April 2015 -- IDC Worldwide Cloud Systems Management Software 2014-2018 Forecast)
SMB Hybrid Cloud usage will jump by 56% in 2015. (August 17, 2014. SMB Hybrid Cloud usage will jump by 56% in 2015; Public vs. Private vs. Hybrid. http://techaisle.com/blog/168-smb-cloud-private-public-or-hybrid-cloud-what-is-in-use)
There are more than 6.2 million small and mid-size businesses in the U.S. and 78 million small and mid-size businesses worldwide, presenting a wealth of opportunity for providers that can address the SMB's need for cloud-enabled, feature-rich, holistic solutions that are cost-effective and easy to own and maintain. (April 2015 -- The Growth Opportunity for SMB Cloud and Hybrid Business Continuity' -- Carbonite)
The Cisco and Konect Center partnered Hybrid IT solution provides answers while other vendors are still asking questions. SMBs can now receive all of the many benefits for moving to a Hybrid IT business model by easily implementing and maintaining Cisco Hybrid IT.
The Solution
Cisco Hybrid IT meets SMBs where they're at today and allows for growth and scalability.
Cisco and Konect have teamed up to offer a full services out-of-the-box solution that leverages multiple components that have been integrated together to meet customers where they're at today and provide the path of least resistance to get to Hybrid IT quickly, easily, and affordably.
These components include:
- Konect Center: From a single pane manager SMBs can securely extend private on premise governance policies to Cisco cloud infrastructure services using Konect VPN SSL. This gives IT unparalleled flexibility when implementing best practices to provision, deploy, and manage best-suited company resources. In addition, SMBs can securely publish user specific resources to virtually any device, making them available to a user anywhere, and anytime. User resources include RemoteApps, desktops, workstations, and files and data.
- Cisco Intercloud: The Konect Center integration into Cisco Infrastructure Services (CIS) enables IT administrators to seamlessly provision, manage, and deploy cloud resources on demand. This gives SMBs the elasticity, scalability, and security that they need to migrate from a CAPEX to OPEX model, thereby boosting productivity while lowering costs.
- UCS Mini: Konect is UCS Intercloud certified and in turn makes the ideal complement to deliver a hybrid model using Cisco UCS Mini. Now SMBs can have the best of both worlds delivered from one vendor.
- Cisco CSR 1000V VPN SSL: An easy to use, secure, scalable and cost effective VPN SSL hybrid connection, the Konect Center provides dynamic provisioning of Cisco’s world class virtual router, giving administrators the option for secure routing and SSL VPN between in-house private cloud to the Cisco public cloud.
- Governance Policies: Using Cisco CSR 1000V VPN SSL, the Konect Center can extend private on premise Active Directory, Group Policy, and domain policies to Cisco Intercloud using a secure connection to keep corporate data secure.
- Openstack: The Konect Center integration into Cisco Infrastructure Services (CIS) using Openstack API's provides IT administrators an easy to use single management pane to seamlessly provision, manage, and deploy private, public, and hybrid compute, storage, networking resources on demand.
- Microsoft: Konect Center's tight integration into Hyper-V offers IT administrator the ability to fully provision, manage, and deploy private on premise VM resources. The Konect VM Library is used to create golden image templates to make it effortless to generate VM resources on demand to meet SMB business requirements.
- Publishing User Resources: The Konect Center publishes both private and public cloud resources in a single delivery from a single management pane. User resources include RemoteApps, Desktops, Workstations, and files and data.
- Mobility: Users can securely access their specific business critical resources anywhere, any time, and from any device.
Add it all up and Cisco Konect Hybrid IT solutions empower SMBs with new ways to work better.
“Cisco Intercloud is pleased to work with dts in order to provide a unique SMB Hybrid IT solution that truly delivers on the promise of a better cloud future”, states Kenneth Owens, CTO, Cisco Intercloud Services.
“This new hybrid cloud offering from Cisco Intercloud and Konect Center allows us to easily mix and match our private and public cloud services, allowing us to provide a truly unique offering to our customers while lowering our overhead management and ongoing operational costs. We are very excited to have this new solution running on Cisco Intercloud with Konect Center giving us the flexibility, scalability, and elasticity to meet our client demands as required. This solution enables many new business models for us; we are excited to expand from our current Law Application ‘Hybrid SaaS’ offering to other SaaS verticals and other DaaS/WaaS offerings as well.”
- Luis Pérez Galván, CTO, Neogenesys.
The Opportunity (Use-cases)
Hybrid IT for SMBs enables the channel to tap into a massive emerging market.
The Konect Center with Cisco CSR V1000 Hybrid IT solutions provide SMBs with an easy-to-implement-and-maintain Hybrid IT solution that will integrate into their current IT infrastructure and provide the growth and scalability into the cloud as they need.
“Working together to extend private clouds into the public cloud, the Konect Center and Cisco Intercloud solutions meet SMBs where they are today and help them achieve their goals of growth and scalability in the future”, Kenneth Owens, CTO, Cisco Intercloud Services.
There are many use-cases for Hybrid IT as a solution to help SMBs propel themselves to the next level. From virtualization to resource publishing to cloud bursting and the benefits of being able to manage everything with a single pane dashboard, Cisco + Konect Hybrid IT streamlines business processes keeping IT happy and users productive.
The many benefits of a hybrid cloud are maximized when a business has a single solution in place that pulls together all of the 5 following technologies under one roof:
- Desktop Virtualization allows IT to create, manage and publish resources such as desktops, applications, and data out to users.
- Workspace as a Service (WaaS) is a term that describes combining these various resources into a single delivery of specific apps, desktops and data to individual users so they can simply log in and "get their stuff".
- Cloud Computing is providing WaaS from a cloud (virtual infrastructure), whether private, public, or hybrid.
- Mobility refers to the "frontend mobility" which allows IT to easily provide users with easy secure remote access to their specific WaaS resources from anywhere, anytime, and on any device.
- Hybrid Cloud enables "backend mobility" by combining various cloud resources into a single WaaS delivery for each user.
By enabling any or all of these 5 technologies with Cisco and Konect, businesses can grow as required with the solution, scaling as needed, while at the same time retaining "accuracy" when it comes to on-demand resources and network infrastructure costs.
With Cisco Hybrid IT, SMB owners are happy as productivity is boosted while costs are down;, users are happy as they can just log in and "get their stuff";, IT is happy as they get their weekends back, and the Cisco channel is happy as they can finally provide an truly effective solution for the massive emerging SMB Hybrid IT market.