PARTNER INTERVIEW
Interview: VISION Cloud Partner SAP About Challenges in Cloud Storage
We talked to VISION Cloud Partner SAP about cloud storage and how the VISION Cloud use cases address current cloud challenges.
We wanted to know how the VISION Cloud partners view current challenges and opportunities in cloud storage and in how far the VISION Cloud project addresses these issues.
After having talked to Telenor, this interview with SAP highlights the fact that providing cloud storage with enterprise-grade qualities while keeping TCO low is one of the major challenges that need to be tackled.
Interview:
Q1: SAP is a partner in VISION Cloud. Why is cloud storage relevant for your company?
Cloud storage provides an instant and cheap means for obtaining access to virtually infinite highly-durable and highly-available storage. By sharing resources with many other users, we are able to pay only for what we consume and when we consume it and can enjoy the inherent advantages in terms of disaster recovery.
In addition, cloud storage opens new possibilities for implementing applications that rely on the new virtues of cloud storage, in both the enterprise space and the consumer space. Among others, these new approaches to storage and applications lower the barrier of benefits for SME organizations and people alike.
Q2: What are the main challenges in today‘s cloud computing landscape?
The prime limitation in current SoA is vendor or provider lock-in and lack of standardization in accessing cloud storage devices. Additional limitations pertain to legal accountability and current perception of data security. From SAP's point of view, the main challenge is how to provide cloud storage with enterprise-grade qualities while keeping TCO low.
Q3: What are your key concerns for SAP's use cases?
SAP's main use cases for Cloud Storage are demanding multi-tenant applications where performance, scalability, fault tolerance and high availability are of prime concern. All these features should be provided while the cost of operating the cloud is minimal.
Since SAP plans to provision business applications on the cloud, another key concern for SAP use cases is the integration of the cloud storage and the compute cloud.
Q4: What are your plans for year two in VISION Cloud?
Investigate how our enterprise use case can benefit from mobility and federation capabilities. Also, we at SAP are looking forward to leverage the full power of Storlets and have compute power close to the data.
Q5: How may SSD effect the current cloud storage interfaces?
The adoption of cloud computing promotes the shift from IT investments based on CAPEX to service consumption based on operational expense, or the shift from on-premis ownership of IT assets to on-demand consumption of services. The notion and attitude towards data – its location, ownership, security, etc. will change, however, it demands organizational and psychological transformational processes before the provisioning of such services may be realized to their full potential.
Further Links:
VISION Cloud Fact Sheet
VISION Cloud Use Cases
VISION Cloud Project Partners
After having talked to Telenor, this interview with SAP highlights the fact that providing cloud storage with enterprise-grade qualities while keeping TCO low is one of the major challenges that need to be tackled.
Interview:
Q1: SAP is a partner in VISION Cloud. Why is cloud storage relevant for your company?
Cloud storage provides an instant and cheap means for obtaining access to virtually infinite highly-durable and highly-available storage. By sharing resources with many other users, we are able to pay only for what we consume and when we consume it and can enjoy the inherent advantages in terms of disaster recovery.
In addition, cloud storage opens new possibilities for implementing applications that rely on the new virtues of cloud storage, in both the enterprise space and the consumer space. Among others, these new approaches to storage and applications lower the barrier of benefits for SME organizations and people alike.
Q2: What are the main challenges in today‘s cloud computing landscape?
The prime limitation in current SoA is vendor or provider lock-in and lack of standardization in accessing cloud storage devices. Additional limitations pertain to legal accountability and current perception of data security. From SAP's point of view, the main challenge is how to provide cloud storage with enterprise-grade qualities while keeping TCO low.
Q3: What are your key concerns for SAP's use cases?
SAP's main use cases for Cloud Storage are demanding multi-tenant applications where performance, scalability, fault tolerance and high availability are of prime concern. All these features should be provided while the cost of operating the cloud is minimal.
Since SAP plans to provision business applications on the cloud, another key concern for SAP use cases is the integration of the cloud storage and the compute cloud.
Q4: What are your plans for year two in VISION Cloud?
Investigate how our enterprise use case can benefit from mobility and federation capabilities. Also, we at SAP are looking forward to leverage the full power of Storlets and have compute power close to the data.
Q5: How may SSD effect the current cloud storage interfaces?
The adoption of cloud computing promotes the shift from IT investments based on CAPEX to service consumption based on operational expense, or the shift from on-premis ownership of IT assets to on-demand consumption of services. The notion and attitude towards data – its location, ownership, security, etc. will change, however, it demands organizational and psychological transformational processes before the provisioning of such services may be realized to their full potential.
Further Links:
VISION Cloud Fact Sheet
VISION Cloud Use Cases
VISION Cloud Project Partners
Published:
28.10.2011Author:
Linda Rath-Wiggins
