Issue link: https://cp.revolio.com/i/141720
with a mix of existing and new projects tend to look at the cloud on a case-by-case basis. We have customers who have moved existing applications from on-premise to the cloud, and we have customers who are leaving existing applications where they are (if it ain't broke...) and putting new applications in the cloud. In no case are our customers treating the cloud as a novelty. They do their homework and use the cloud with eyes wide open." This flexibility is one of the advantages of the cloud that enables adopters to look past some of the lingering concerns. Cloud Solutions: An InFocus Snapshot Getting even a sparse picture of the range of cloud offerings is difficult. Furthermore, many users are already familiar (in name, if nothing else) with major cloud solutions like Carbonite for storage, Amazon EC2 for compute resources, the Microsoft Windows Azure cloud platform and so on. Instead of attempting to look hastily at many different available options, this article focuses in depth on two solutions: one in enterprise resource planning (ERP) and one in cloud storage. These cloud services offer a glimpse into the cloud market, including how customers are responding. Cloud ERP: Plex Systems "Our customers understand that as they are challenged to keep up with the demand of today's business model, they need to look to technology not only to stay competitive, but also to drive their business forward," said Jim Shepherd, VP of Strategy for Plex Systems. "Fortunately ERP systems have evolved to keep pace with these changes; today cloud-based solutions are now considered to be competitive and even preferred over traditional software delivery models. With cloud-based solutions, companies can depend on a continuous product update cycle and the ability to seamlessly adapt their ERP software to their changing needs without disruption." The company offers its Plex Manufacturing Cloud SaaS (software as a service) solution for meeting manufacturing ERP needs. Exhibiting some of the key advantages of cloud computing, this solution enables secure remote access from any webbrowser-enabled mobile device. Likewise, because the company handles hardware and software maintenance and updates, www.datacenterjournal.com customers can simply take advantage of new capabilities as they become available. "Improvements are deployed daily and customers can start using them when they are ready for the new feature. Our customers have been able to branch into manufacturing segments without branching to new ERPs because we accommodated their needs per their timetable, facilitating rather than blocking business diversification and expansion," said Shepherd. As a veteran of the cloud, Plex Systems has focused for over a decade on the cloud rather than traditional software approaches. Shepherd noted that the company "was born in the cloud. Plex Online, first released in 2000, is the first fully integrated Internet-based manufacturing software solution. The company ceased delivering traditional software in 2001, migrating our entire business model to an online hosted software solution." Citing the company's efforts to meet customer needs, Shepherd also identified two critical areas of importance to those looking to the cloud: security and availability. "Not only do our customers want to be assured that only authorized personnel are able to access their data, but they also want to be assured that they will have uninterrupted access to their data." In addition, Plex Systems aims to use exploit the strengths of its cloud positioning by delivering new features, maintaining the value of its cloud offering over the traditional approach of software purchases and upgrades. "Plex Systems strives to anticipate customer requests before the fact—the company recently released IntelliPlex, a fully-integrated business-intelligence application that enables corporate executives to easily analyze customer and business information stored in their Plex Cloud ERP database." Through this offering and the company's SmartPlex mobile access platform, customers can achieve "mobile and dynamic access from the manufacturing floor directly to the C-suite faster and more cost-effectively and can be accessed anytime, anywhere." Cloud Storage: Zadara Storage Zadara Storage offers its products for use both through major public clouds and locally through providers delivering storage as a service. The company's Virtual Private Storage Arrays offer "the reliability, performance, features and support for existing applications that customers expect from on-premise storage," said Noam Shendar. "But unlike non-cloud storage, our VPSAs are affordable, offered by the hour, and can be grown, shrunk and canceled at any time. What we've managed to do is provide enterprise storage arrays (sometimes referred to as SAN and NAS arrays) by the hour, inside public clouds (attachable to cloud servers) or private clouds, with no longterm commitment." The company aims to fill gaps in cloud-based storage by delivering capabilities such as shared storage, NFS file storage as a service, performance tuning, enterprise database support and high availability. "These are all features at the heart of running enterprise applications and databases. Without those capabilities, it was nearly impossible to run existing, mission-critical applications in the cloud. And even if the applications ran, they lacked a high level of reliability and consistent performance." In attempting to meet the security concerns of customers, Zadara Storage dedicates hardware resources to customers rather than sharing them, garnering both isolation of customers from each other and "performance isolation." The company also offers optional encryption of both stored and in-flight data, leaving encryption keys in customer hands to minimize third-party access to this information. "This means that the customer doesn't need to trust us or the cloud provider. It also means that the customer doesn't need to worry about wiping their drives before returning them into circulation," said Shendar. Furthermore, customers "can choose to have the storage only visible and accessible inside the cloud. This takes advantage of the security already put in place by the cloud provider." Shendar noted that by taking on more of the appearance of standard IT models, the cloud will garner more investment and drive growth. Thus, although in some sense the cloud is mature (or, at least, quickly approaching that stage), it still leaves plenty of room for development. But this situation is unsurprising: traditional IT has a head start on the cloud, so naysayers can easily find points at which the cloud falls short. "We think that a good way to look at it is the difference of several orders of magnitudes between the total IT market and the cloud market," he said. "The cloud market is still much, much smaller than IT. And we think that in order to accelerate the flow of IT investment from traditional solutions to cloud solutions, the cloud needs to look a little more like traditional IT." THE DATA CENTER JOURNAL | 31