What is an Enterprise Cloud?

An enterprise cloud is a unified IT operating environment that melds private, public and distributed clouds, providing a single point of control for managing infrastructure and applications in any cloud. The enterprise cloud delivers a consistent, high-performance and seamless experience for both cloud operators and consumers of cloud-delivered services and applications.

The enterprise cloud is a model for IT infrastructure and platform services that delivers the advantages of public cloud services for enterprise applications without compromising on the value provided by private datacenter environments.

Why use an Enterprise Cloud?

With enterprise cloud, IT can drive simplicity for multi-cloud governance with an open approach that values flexibility and optionality. It empowers end-users with self-service of on-premises and public resources and automates deployment and management of applications across multiple environments while maintaining governance and control. The enterprise cloud also unify governance across all cloud environments and teams for optimal resource utilization and compliance.

Who uses an Enterprise Cloud?

Companies of all types in a wide variety of industries are adopting an Enterprise Cloud platform —including those in healthcare, retail, financial services, manufacturing, federal agencies and many more.

Within enterprises, adoption is being driven largely by IT departments looking to modernize datacenters. They’re seeking the benefits of the cloud, its services, and SLAs, along with the security and control that they’ve grown accustomed to within the datacenter. The Enterprise Cloud provides the “best of both worlds” to meet these needs. Simultaneously, business owners or app owners are adopting the Enterprise Cloud with the goal of taking their products to market quickly without being delayed by IT.

What are the components of the enterprise cloud?

Unified Governance models are the policy-centric instantiations of the single control plane discussed earlier in this chapter.
Full-stack infrastructure and platform services deliver turnkey infrastructure for any app at any scale, anywhere, delivered through a combination of on-premises datacenters and public cloud services.
Zero-click operations and machine intelligence deliver operational simplicity through automation and insights.
Rapid elastic consumption allows businesses to buy and use only the IT resources they need, and non disruptively scale when demands grow enabling an OpEx model within and outside of the datacenter.
Integrated security and governance covers the entire infrastructure stack across private and public clouds, leveraging automation to maintain a security baseline.
Application-centric mobility lets businesses place and move applications anywhere, with no infrastructure lock-in.

What are the benefits of utilizing an enterprise cloud model?

A brand new economic model

Legacy-based IT economic models are no longer sufficient. Adopt pay-as-you-go characteristics of the public cloud while providing a common foundation to run both legacy and new-style or cloud-native apps with the enterprise cloud.

Focus on the end-user

Users are demanding new services all the time. The Enterprise Cloud can focus your efforts on addressing the deficiencies seen by end-users.

Faster response from IT

IT has a perception of being slow, especially when compared with cloud providers, who can instantly deploy new infrastructure. The Enterprise Cloud provides instant infrastructure for business users.

Refocusing IT on the business

The 80/20 rule can become the rule if you do things right. Enterprise cloud can help make this shift. Tailor IT department’s services to activities that generate revenue rather than simply keeping the lights on.

Choice is key

Any cloud, at any time. Organizations need a choice of where to run workloads. Don’t be forced into a single public cloud provider. With the Enterprise Cloud, choose the right cloud for your business and don’t end up with workloads trapped somewhere else.

The difference between Enterprise Cloud and Public Cloud

Public clouds like AWS and Azure are controlled by Amazon and Microsoft respectively, and for the most part, your data sits outside your datacenter. These clouds force users to build and deploy applications that conform to their processes and architectures. An Enterprise Cloud enables you to get the best of both worlds: a public cloud experience in your on-prem datacenter that lets you choose best in breed technology that suits your business, and where you can seamlessly manage data and workloads in the public cloud when you need to.

What’s the difference between Enterprise Cloud and Hybrid Cloud?

A hybrid cloud brings together elements of private and public cloud. The problem with traditional hybrid cloud is the dichotomy it presents: the latest and greatest public cloud solution on one side, and legacy hardware on the other. An Enterprise Cloud solution brings cloud technology on-premises and ensures that it behaves and operates similarly within the datacenter and the public cloud. It delivers the benefits of not just public and private clouds, but also distributed and edge clouds. Enterprise Cloud is also optimized for application management and automation—hybrid cloud, less so.