Choosing a partner for enterprise cloud production workloads

Thirty-five percent of business leaders want cloud computing to spur “radical business innovation.”1 That’s the finding of a recent IBM Institute for Business Value study. But thus far, use of clouds has been more practical than profound. Many businesses regularly use public clouds for application development and testing and for data backup and storage. In doing so, organizations find that cloud computing can help solve everyday data center challenges: sprawl; arduous processes to procure, build and maintain server environments; operational inefficiencies; and, of course, rising costs.

IBM believes that increased innovation will come once organizations migrate mission-critical production workloads to managed clouds: clouds administered by outside technology companies that provide consistent availability; enterpriseclass security; full management of the cloud infrastructure and workloads; scalable access to applications, resources and services; and an array of other cloud management functions. Workloads such as SAP applications, along with additional enterprise resource planning, customer relationship management, human resource management and supply chain management programs, can bring more value to the business once migrated to these types of clouds. In helping companies save money and staff resources, managed clouds can free up funds and talent to focus on new products and services that will bring increased business value to the organization.