ABSTRACT
There is no such thing as a data or information recession. – Greg Schulz
• Moving beyond the hype • Navigating the maze of cloud and virtualization stories • The business demands of IT and data storage • IT issues and challenges involving data storage • The business benefit of cloud and virtual data storage networking • Opportunities to address data storage issues and challenges • The role of virtualization, cloud, and storage networking • Maximizing IT resources without compromising quality of service • What defines a public and private cloud service, product, solution, or paradigm • The importance of information access, data consistency, and availability
This chapter looks at the big picture of business issues and demand drivers that set up the need for cloud, virtualization, and data storage networking. Key themes and buzzwords covered include cloud computing, cloud storage, public and private clouds, information factories, virtualization, business issues or challenges, barriers to productivity, technology tools and techniques, along with best practices. Additional themes and topics discussed include enabling agility, flexibility, scalability, resiliency, multitenancy, elasticity, managed service providers (MSPs), converged networks, Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), Software as a Service (SaaS), and IT optimization.
