Latin America. While the cloud has simplified computing and storage for the enterprise sector, many IT departments are concerned about the lack of flexibility between available platforms.
Recurrently, customers are forced to choose between an on-premises platform or a cloud platform as a permanent solution, when the truth is that many companies may want to alternate after the growth of their business or the change of their needs.
Similar to compute and storage paradigms, enterprise customers should not feel limited to a single approach to their networking needs. Instead, they should have the freedom to choose the solution that best suits their business requirements.
These new customer requirements are rapidly transforming how vendors view their solutions to the cloud and how they are deployed. As experts in storage clouds, providers must keep abreast of the changing needs of SMBs and companies to cover the issues of agility and simplicity, so required today in the storage cloud landscape.
The time for cloud deployment has come
Despite the number of companies currently developing cloud solutions, a Goldman Sachs study in 2015 revealed that spending on cloud services would increase by 30% between 2013 and 2018. Considering the pace at which technology evolves, it is inevitable that cloud solutions will slowly lose their value thanks to a lack of agility.
The cloud, which had originally been designed for small businesses, has expanded its reach to hospitals, schools, entertainment and the business sector. In 2014, Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) conducted a survey that found that nearly 60% of executives expressed interest in finding cloud providers and 25% wanted to switch vendors.
Although this study was conducted two years ago, it has seen little progress in designing a solution that simplifies how companies operate in the cloud. Pre-existing solutions do not contemplate how the cloud has matured, giving an emancipatory hand to new providers in this market.
Goodbye to vendor dependency
Vendor dependency is a huge hurdle that has been a source of frustration for customers using the cloud. As the EMA survey reflected, people want to leverage solutions from different vendors to cover a single system. Similarly, as the business grows, there may come a time when it makes sense to switch from an on-premises storage solution to a cloud, cloud to on-premises solution, or maintain a system that operates hybridly.
To meet these new needs, suppliers must begin to develop solutions that are compatible with other manufacturers – including competitors – to ensure that customers receive best-in-class technology regardless of brand name.
This movement aligns with the trend at the industrial level that is heading towards disaggregation. Now more than ever, disaggregation is taking over the cloud, software-defined networking (SDN) and data centers, enabling customers to optimize existing technology, deliver new types of services and open up new business opportunities. Now the supplier's responsibility is to design a platform that offers more versatile support.
Leverage existing mobile solutions for cloud deployment
In addition to a friendly solution, cloud management network providers are expected to change the way they approach their own hardware to simplify their deployment. Historically, fixed and mobile solutions have been evaluated based on their speed compared to their competitors.
Today, providers must conceive of their hardware as service platforms. The best solution is not necessarily the provider with the fastest access points (APs), but the provider that can offer APs that encompass other services in the same way.
The Next Generation of Cloud Deployment
Cloud maturity and customer demand will ultimately drive the development of the cloud industry in 2016 and beyond. Cloud service providers that are new to the market have the advantage, since they can design products more suitable for the industrial sector.
Meanwhile, existing solutions will have to reinvent their capabilities to offer more flexibility and agility. Although the use of the cloud has been popularly implemented in the business sector, there will undoubtedly be a change as more providers enter the market seeking to meet the demand of the industry.
Text written by Mike Leibovitz, director of the CTO office at Extreme Networks
