The Service Provider of Tomorrow, Part 1

Since the start of the Internet era, enterprise data centers and IT service providers have forged an uneasy co-existence.  For the most part, decision-making by IT managers has been binary … either I’m going to keep my IT infrastructure in my enterprise data center, or I’m going to consume hosting services.  The IT service provider value proposition has been strongest for medium-sized companies who can’t afford to investment in premium IT infrastructure, facilities and 24×7 staff.

Now things are changing.  As we enter the cloud computing era, we move away from binary decision making and enter the world of hybrid infrastructure.  IT service providers are changing the boundaries of where the enterprise data center ends and the service provider begins. Public Clouds, Private Clouds, Hybrid Clouds offering elastic, multi-tenant, burstable, on demand computing are more than just buzzwords. They are the foundation upon which the successful service providers of tomorrow will be built.

In this series of articles I will examine what this new breed of service providers will look like, how they will be different than their predecessors and what they need to do to succeed. We will also describe how the enterprise data center, while shrinking in pervasiveness and influence, will still play a key role in the future of IT. And in each case we will take a specific look at why security is going to be a vital enabler of the cloud computing service provider era.

Service providers need:

• Multi-tenancy
• Elasticity
• IaaS
• PaaS
• Ability to support public and private clouds
• New types of expertise and automation
• Billing systems metering burstable capacity and virtual instances

Each of these key aspects of the next generation service provider model has a strong security overlay that will dictate customer adoption rate and separate winners and losers in this new market.

In future articles I will discuss each of these areas in greater detail. I hope you will find them interesting and useful.

This is part 1 in what will be an on going series of articles by Gray Hall on the Service Provider of tomorrow. Gray’s experience in the service provider and security industry give him a unique vantage to offer insight into what the successful service provider business will look like as we transition into a new era of cloud computing.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Architectural Multi-tenancy (devcentral.f5.com)
• PaaS Is The Future Of Cloud Services: Northscale Wants To Help Extend Platform Services (diversity.net.nz)
• Cloud Computing has Significance for Management and Environment (businessmanagement.suite101.com)
• Univa Publishes Cloud Computing Blueprint for Intel Cloud Builder Program (eon.businesswire.com)