VMware White Paper Sample

The first, clear sign that IT delivery models are shifting lies in the end users. In many cases, users or groups of users, rather than IT departments, are the ones introducing public cloud or Web services into the company. Be it "prosumer" mail services offered by Web companies, online backup, computing capabilities on demand (e.g., Google Apps, Amazon WebServices, etc.), or even deployments of online CRM solutions, often it is single users or business units that make the decision — most of the time without even being familiar with the concept of "cloud computing."

IT departments end up losing control, potentially creating a dangerous scenario in which data and applications are neither monitored nor protected by IT staff, simply because IT is unaware of their existence. In addition, IT and end users already use various forms of "cloud services" without actually calling them such. This often leads to misconceptions among various staff levels, from IT management through to Clevel, that cloud services are not yet used in the business and as such are treated with mistrust and considered for alternative IT delivery models. In reality in many cases these new delivery models have already been embraced and have lost their aura of being new and untrusted. IDC believes IT needs to regain control over its delivered services and needs to fully understand what and how services are delivered. Only then can an efficient and secure service be delivered back to the business. In this respect, the ability to ensure that applications and workloads run on compatible standards, both internally on virtualized private clouds and externally on datacenters of third-party suppliers, represent a first important step toward improved control over cloud services within enterprises.