The nature of all "cloud" and "consolidation" projects makes the effective delivery of data over network connections, potentially WAN pipes of limited capacity, a major challenge. But your users won't care about that. They just want a service that works as if it's local. The question is how do you guarantee such service levels?
You can get some clues on how to achieve that by watching this free webcast.
We have Tim Phillips, The Register's man in front of the camera, in a studio with a couple of guys who know a fair few things about optimising networks. Tony Lock, from Freeform Dynamics, and Mark Lewis from Riverbed are the men in the hot seats and between them they will look at how effective WAN and network communications can be provided to help address the service quality challenges inherent in storage consolidation projects as well as in both internal and external cloud solutions.
We have some particular areas to explore in some detail, including:
Storage: back up to the cloud. Can you get the job done in the time available to you? Is it worth it?
Application: users will beat you with sticks if they notice cloud-based apps aren't performing (what will they notice?)
Private cloud: how to optimise, how you can extend existing service levels to the new environment.
Public cloud: preserving these service levels as you migrate: solving potential performance problems of public cloud, with examples of pitfalls.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
