Unisys has announced its Unisys Hybrid Enterprise framework, a comprehensive methodology and set of services for helping organizations manage multiple IT delivery models - both traditional and cloud-based - within a consistent computing environment managed as a single entity.
The Unisys Hybrid Enterprise framework is intended to help CIOs avoid the creation of isolated cloud in a corner computing environments that are not integrated with the organization's existing mission-critical systems, says Unisys. According to the company, this condition can lead to higher costs due to infrastructure complexity, overlapping staff skills and greater resource requirements; reduced control over infrastructure and service levels; greater security, governance and compliance risks; and organizational change and process issues.
Organizations that want to build a private cloud typically start by evaluating their top four or five strategic vendors, but they don't have a clear set of articulated goals and feature requirements by which they are going to base their decision, Unisys' John Treadway, director, Cloud Services and Solutions, tells 5 Minute Briefing. "They are doing market education in parallel with doing their evaluation, and, the result of that approach, he says, is that they are letting their vendors' technologies drive the discussion about what their cloud should do as opposed to their internal users, use cases, and requirements, says Treadway. "This is putting the cart before the horse, and it is common."
Unisys, he says, often gets requests to evaluate its technology. And while it is "very supportive" of customers that want to do so, he says the company prefers to work with them by educating them up front on the larger issues about getting their cloud program done the right way "so they are doing a measure twice, cut once kind of model."
When organizations do these cloud-in-a-box scenarios, they wind up with a "cloud in the corner" - something that does not integrate with the rest of the enterprise, doesn't fit their needs, and eventually there is a good likelihood that it is going to be abandoned, and they are going to get on to the second- or third-generation product before they get it right, says Treadway.
The Unisys Hybrid Enterprise framework is intended to help CIOs avoid the creation of isolated cloud in a corner computing environments that are not integrated with the organization's existing mission-critical systems, says Unisys. According to the company, this condition can lead to higher costs due to infrastructure complexity, overlapping staff skills and greater resource requirements; reduced control over infrastructure and service levels; greater security, governance and compliance risks; and organizational change and process issues.
As a key part of the Unisys Hybrid Enterprise framework, Unisys also announced its portfolio of Unisys CloudBuild Services, which enable clients to plan, design and implement mission-critical cloud solutions cost-effectively within an integrated enterprise environment.
Customers need a roadmap for managing their cloud projects that is tightly integrated with their existing investments, optimizes efficiency and provides a single view of their overall IT workload, and the Unisys Hybrid Enterprise framework gives them that roadmap.
"As you are introducing all of these new deployment models for the cloud you are impacting operations, and governance and management processes across IT in new and unforeseen ways because those things are not managed the same way as your internal infrastructure, and there are not tools in place in most enterprises to handle governance and compliance issues in their new cloud," says Treadway. Rather than a hybrid cloud solution that focuses only on integrating different forms of private and public clouds, the Unisys Hybrid Enterprise framework enables CIOs to manage all of the IT delivery models across their enterprise within a single, integrated management framework based on common technology, processes and policies.
In addition, the new Unisys CloudBuild Services complement the company's existing line of data center and cloud transformation services, and are designed to help clients - whether enterprises, government agencies or cloud-service providers - cost-effectively plan, design and implement cloud infrastructure. Unisys CloudBuild Services provide a series of workshops and joint engagement activities through which Unisys, using its eight-track methodology, creates an integrated plan, roadmap and detailed design delivered as an integrated "concept of operations" document. The "ConOps" document guides implementation of the integrated data center-cloud infrastructure. In the implementation phase, Unisys works with client teams to build and integrate their cloud as defined in the planning and design stage.
"We are trying to back people up from doing these things too quickly and without enough thought," so they consider the issues of applications, data center infrastructure, and how to manage across all of that, says Treadway.
More information is available about the Unisys Hybrid Enterprise framework, Unisys CloudBuild Services, and the Unisys Converged Remote Infrastructure Management Suite of solutions, which provides integrated, "single pane" management of clients' multi-vendor infrastructures.