Beyond virtualisation to cloud

Cut through the clutter

Published October 2016

Cloud isn’t virtualisation. It’s more dynamic. It’s hybrid. But, most fundamentally, it’s a different mindset. Cloud isn’t about servers, even virtualised ones. It’s about services. Building a cloud involves designing a catalog of standardised services—think of them as application or development environments—and offering them to consumers, such as developers, through a low-touch, self-service interface. Access to these services is controlled by policy, as is the runtime management (such as patching) of these environments after they are deployed.

Although hybrid clouds can be adopted in an evolutionary way, this change in mindset means that cloud deployments, like other strategic IT projects, benefit from a degree of process—even if it’s lightweight process. This whitepaper outlines one such approach based on research from the IT Process Institute.