Context: CSC has stepped up its Cloud push in the UK with the introduction of BizCloud, a private 'Cloud-in-a-box' solution bought pre-configured and pre-tested which can also be paid for via a public Cloud as a service. BizCloud is built on CSC’s own Cloud Compute Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), which in turn is based on Vblocks, the result of a joint venture of VMware, Cisco and EMC.
Although mission-critical applications can remain safely behind a business’ firewall, CSC gives a hybrid option for BizCloud, allowing companies to move the likes of disaster recovery or backup out to its public Cloud datacentres. The service comes in three guises – standard, enterprise and enterprise plus – with four service levels to choose from. CSC claims to provide 99 to 99.95 per cent uptime for the standard rate card prices.
K2 Commentary: Most CIOs have decided that both private and public Cloud infrastructure have roles to play in the the delivery of IT services for their organisations. And many are using Cloud services tactically to trial the capability and get a feel for which workloads to place where in terms of using public, private and hybrid Cloud solutions. However, many CIOs are also currently having to make longer-term strategic decisions about specific workloads that need new investment but they don’t yet feel confident enough to deliver these workloads from anywhere beyond the firewall. The concerns are not to do with the maturity of virtualised technology - they are to do with data protection regulation. CSC has come to Europe with a well-articulated capability to address this dilemma, a capability called BizCloud, which is part of CSC’s VMware vCloud Datacentre Service portfolio.
BizCloud provides organisations with all the components needed for a private cloud, preconfigured, integrated and tested, on their own premises behind their firewall. Customers subscribe to the service, pay only for what they use and can choose from different levels of service-level agreement, provisioning and support. Workloads can be scaled up or down according to demand. The service has been available in the US for around six months and is now being rolled out in Europe.
BizCloud features CloudCompute, CSC’s new infrastructure as a service (IaaS) architecture which is also deployed in the CSC cloud enabled datacentres offering both off-premise public Cloud services and off-premise dedicated private Cloud services. This allows users to also take advantage of a hybrid approach by keeping mission critical applications on premise with BizCloud, while using CSC’s off premise Cloud for disaster recovery or business continuity or for setting up agile development and test environments. To date within Europe, these off premise vCloud data centres are in operation in the UK, Denmark and Luxembourg, with another going live in Switzerland later this year.
The promise of CSC’s Cloud strategy is, according to Siki Giunta, VP Global Cloud Services and Software, to offer “the right Cloud at the right time for the right workload.” Because BizCloud shares the same Vblock fabric as the CSC public and off-premise private cloud models, organisations can focus on moving workloads to the right Cloud model based on the security and control those workloads require.
By offering this service, CSC has taken the work out of implementing a private cloud and overcome many objections that enterpises have to cloud adoption. Ready for workloads in 10 weeks, BizCloud accelerates the adoption of a private cloud by businesses and government agencies, eliminating lengthy implementations and the need to budget for capital investment.
There are four service tiers within CSC’s vCloud Datacentre Service ranging from bronze and silver self-service capabilities for using off-premise public and private Cloud services to gold and platinum managed services for off-premise and on-premise private Clouds. In this way organisations can pick and choose the appropriate service levels depending on different workload requirements. All CSC cloud models are billed as a service from a standard rate card — the same rate card for off- and on- premise private clouds and public cloud models.
Giunta is tasked with developing a $1bn Cloud business for CSC by 2013. Challenged as to whether this would be possible without cannibalising CSC’s existing outsourcing business, she replied: “there will not be much cannibalisation of revenue because typically we are winning contracts for new application development or we are winning new logos. Our sales team does not get paid commission for selling into existing accounts.” Rather, the sales focus appears to be on existing HP and IBM accounts.
