Enterprise PaaS company rPath has unveiled a new adoption model for enterprise IT and managed service providers to help decrease risk in cloud projects and assure better business outcomes. The framework, which offers insight into the sequence and implications of each successive investment in cloud maturity with a focus on starting points, traps, and destinations, is founded on the principle that an effective cloud must standardize and automate both infrastructure and application platforms.
According to the company, the Enterprise Cloud Adoption Framework addresses the current void of accepted practice for enterprise cloud deployment. The primary target with the framework is large enterprises with their own private clouds and secondarily, service providers, Shawn Edmondson, vice president of product strategy at rPath, tells 5 Minute Briefing. The need for the adoption model is being driven by the needs of customers and prospects, he notes. A few years ago when cloud was very new, customers’ questions focused on what the cloud meant and whether or not they should be adopting it, but more recently the questions have become more sophisticated and high level, he explains. Over the last 6 months, for example, customers’ questions have focused more on which applications they should move to the cloud and which should stay behind, as well as the organizational and process changes if any that they need to make in order for the cloud approach to work at their company. “The questions are fairly consistent and we are hearing the same ones over and over, but we are just not seeing any good answers,” says Edmondson.
According to rPath, the Enterprise Cloud Adoption Framework suggests that standardization and cloud automation reinforce each other through an important symbiotic relationship that cloud builders must tap into, and that the failure to recognize this fundamental tenet will result in flawed adoption of cloud technologies. The framework was developed in conjunction with rPath partner Cisco and Edmondson says, rPath welcomes the participation of additional companies.
Visit www.cloudadoption.org to download the Enterprise Cloud Adoption Framework.