For anyone still doubting whether the Cloud indeed will change everything, the below video is really something to watch. It tells the story of how UK headquartered Logicalis group partnered with Cisco, Netapp and CA to deliver their Cooperative Enterprise Cloud Service. After being the first vendor to deploy Cisco new Unified Computing System in the UK it took the approach one step further and developed it “as a service”.
Don’t let the name BOCS, which stands for “Bespoke On-Site Cloud Service” put you off. Because it seems to deliver everything one could want from a cloud. It runs indoor – nice and secure – during normal conditions, but can scale seamlessly to include additional capacity when needed. And best of all, customers do not have to go out and buy several tyes of software and hardware and piece it all together, that has already been done. Seems too good to be true? Well the video is an animation and the offering is available as contracted service from Q2 of this year, but it sure seems worth the wait.
Now why is this so different, why does it change everything? First of all, this is not traditional outsourcing – where every change is to be regretted as conditions are cemented into concrete. Neither is it “traditional cloud” where even the biggest customer is a mere number and the vendor is typically only reachable via email. This is cloud at a human scale: seemingly promising the benefits of scale and elasticity, but at the same time addressing the potential drawbacks that more and more organizations are starting to realize.
And unlike previous internet innovations, cloud does not seem to be about cutting out the middleman, but about making the IT supply chain as a whole more efficient and effective through intelligent brokering. Welcome your feedback.
BTW in case you’re wondering what technology CA provided to the mix in areas like automation, provisioning, monitoring and energy metering , I am sure Logicalis will be happy to tell you, but reality is that for its customers , it does not matter. And it should not matter. Just like Salesforce makes a point of not discussing what databases it uses and like the specification sheet of a Rolls Royce under horsepower simply says “enough”.
Tune Into The Cloud 