The Cloud is no longer the future for the enterprise, it is now.  The question for today’s global enterprises is not “why?”, but “how?”

Global CapacityMary Stanhope, Vice President of Marketing for Global Capacity, explores the fundamental shift of business applications to the Cloud as well as the enterprise challenges of connecting to and consuming the Cloud in her series of monthly articles featured on CloudTweaks, one of the leading authorities in Cloud computing information.  The articles also offer insight into valuable tools that simplify Cloud connectivity, such as Global Capacity’s One Marketplace™, as well as the best technology solutions to meet the requirements for delivering external Public, Private and Hybrid Cloud services.

Virtualizing Business Applications Reveals Cloud Connectivity Challenges

Ms. Stanhope begins the series by painting a picture of the current Cloud connectivity landscape.  By 2018, more than 60 percent of enterprises will have at least half of their infrastructure on Cloud-based platforms.  As business applications shift from the traditional four walls of enterprise to third-party data centers, or the Cloud, finding the right network connectivity to reach and consume these applications becomes increasingly more complex for enterprises.  This is due to a Cloud ecosystem of networks, data centers and application and infrastructure providers that is difficult to navigate, as well as the challenges of performance and reliability over costly last-mile access connectivity to the business Cloud user.

Compounding these challenges are contradictory processes for network configuration, implementation and management, and lack of transparency into network assets, service technologies, real-time pricing and operational readiness.  Read more about this fundamental shift and Cloud connectivity challenges in the article Cloud Connectivity: Traversing the Path from the Data Center to Enterprise User.

Simplifying Enterprise Cloud Connectivity with One Marketplace

 With the Cloud only as good as a business employees’ ability to effectively connect to it, the performance of business applications and the delivery of the user experience have become largely dependent on an enterprises’ network connectivity.  In A Marketplace of Networks: Simplifying Enterprise Cloud Connectivity, Ms. Stanhope explores how Global Capacity’s One Marketplace can be used not only to simplify Cloud connectivity in the midst of growing network complexity and application requirements, but also to offer enterprises more control and visibility into the service technologies available at specific locations, service attributes, and real-time pricing so that they can make intelligent connectivity decisions.

Additional One Marketplace benefits for Cloud connectivity revealed by Ms. Stanhope in the article include “what if” modeling capabilities that simplify Wide Area Network (WAN) design and Cloud interconnection, replacing time-consuming RFPs, as well as aggregation of various network connectivity solutions in one location, which enables faster service turn-up and reducing management complexity.

Carrier Ethernet for Cloud Connectivity

Is connecting to the Cloud over the public Internet really safe and reliable?  While it may be suitable for Web research, email and accessing shared business Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications, recent research points to “no” for more complex Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) computing, storage and business-critical applications.  A growing number of security and performance issues are causing enterprises to bypass the public Internet and look for a more reliable, higher performance Cloud connectivity solution.  Enter Carrier Ethernet.

In her latest article, Leveraging Carrier Ethernet to Connect to the Cloud, Ms. Stanhope identifies the unique service attributes that make Ethernet Private Line (EPL) the connectivity technology of choice for enterprises to directly connect to a Private or Public Cloud service provider at a data center.  These include secure connections; predictable Quality of Service (QoS); normalized last-mile delivery; consistent implementation standards; the ability to add new services; end-to-end performance; simple network design, pricing, ordering and management via Global Capacity’s One Marketplace; and connectivity to high-demand destinations.

Stay tuned for upcoming CloudTweaks articles from Global Capacity, in which Ms. Stanhope will delve further into the challenges of connecting to Private, Public, and multiple different (Hybrid) Clouds.  The next articles in the series will also examine how Ethernet Virtual Private Line (EVPL) addresses the issue of reliability and security when accessing business applications found in multiple Clouds using the same secure, direct Ethernet connection being leveraged for other enterprise services.

Ms. Stanhope’s featured CloudTweaks articles can be found here.