In the Cloud

Stripping away the hype, the various cloud models (for infrastructure, software applications or development platforms) all promise a shift to on demand provision, scaling up and down with real business needs. This is particularly attractive when coupled with variable cost models and quality of service levels beyond the reach of traditional outsourcing and hosting service partners. Cloud adoption could dramatically reduce IT spend on running costs, requiring smaller teams and  avoiding future capital expenditure hurdles for hardware purchase and software licensing. For customers emerging from the shadow of recession a cloud based solution offers the means to enter new markets or deliver new services to the tax payer with lower financial risk and commitments.

How to adopt cloud benefits and manage the risks?

At 2e2 we believe that various hybrid strategies – marrying existing dedicated IT investments with either public or private cloud technologies – are the inevitable answer for at least the next five years as the cloud market evolves and stabilises. Cloud should mean reduced costs and rapid deployment of innovative applications, but never at the expense of procurement difficulties or piecemeal, indifferent support levels.

Every organisation should be able to blend commodity shared infrastructure with their existing server and storage capacity to meet business peaks efficiently or explore new offerings cheaply and easily. Private cloud technologies based on high degrees of virtualisation, switching application work-loads to exactly match business cycles are ideal here.

2e2 will provide the design and implementation skills to saturate existing kit as a shared service while managing virtual private networks to include additional public cloud capacity. This will reduce reliance on costly managed hosting while raising the return on investment for the current IT estate. Each user community should have access to a tailored stack of application tools, mixing on premise and Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions in an integrated, secure fashion. By identifying best of breed providers, providing the platform to support many of these, and offering a ‘one stop shop’ to purchase user seats with support tailored to each customer, 2e2 will remove the pain of multiple vendor selection, integration and management.

With over fifteen years experience as a comprehensive ICT managed service provider, 2e2 brings strength in depth across infrastructure, communications, application development implementation with a unique focus on new cloud opportunities. While resistant to cannibalizing their current contracts, and small cloud requirements, 2e2 is keen to work with our clients to shape their individual preferred guide to tailor and support their chosen solution

Our strategy is to monitor the advancing capabilities of public cloud providers and progressively incorporate these within each client’s IT portfolio, while taking care of the management issues for them. In every case, different regulatory and commercial needs will be born in mind to shape a unique, practical adoption plan. For many, the first step will be to adopt private cloud management tools in-house, while public cloud platforms. Others will see immediate cost benefits and flexibility switching to online software solutions in a Software as a Service (SaaS), user role in the organisation.

Wherever possible 2e2 will work with your existing application vendors to develop cloud-based licensing, undertaking the physical infrastructure and operations piece to enable this new channel for them. We will provide attractive pricing models combined with expert premium support covering the applications themselves and their context within your business as a single point of contact. In this way we can drive up service delivery quality, rapidly resolve incidents and quickly identify and remedy any underlying cross-product problems.