PAC Q&A Trusted Cloud A Strategic Offer from Siemens IT Solutions and Services

Transcription

1 Trusted Cloud A Strategic Offer from Siemens IT Solutions and Services Trusted Cloud is one of nine strategic offers from Siemens IT Solutions and Services. Siemens IT Solutions and Services recognizes the need for multiple integration tasks between onsite and cloud IT as well as between the different vendor clouds. Moreover, Siemens IT Solutions and Services adds value for its customers with deep vertical industry knowledge and special cloud offerings combining its technical, process and business expertise. Jordan Janeczko, the global program manager for cloud computing at Siemens IT Solutions and Services, talks with Christoph Witte from PAC about the plans and the positioning of his company in the cloud arena.

2 PAC Fellow Christoph Witte talks to... What makes the Siemens IT Solutions and Services cloud portfolio unique? We bring the business perspective into the cloud debate, which is often seen as a purely technical topic. We also bring very deep vertical industry knowledge to the table. So we can talk to people say from the media industry about the challenges they face as an industry and how they can overcome these challenges using a holistic cloud concept rather than talking about CPU-time for rent. We are conducting business talks, and in these talks cloud computing is considered as one tool that can solve the challenges the customer faces. And our answer to any question is Jordan Janeczko is the global technology manager at Siemens IT Solutions and Services. He has been involved in innovation and new product generation since 1999, both in the IT and telecommunications industries. Since 2009, Jordan has taken on the role of global program manager for the cloud computing initiative at Siemens IT Solutions and Services, an initiative that focuses on companies' growing needs for services such as secure cloud services and cloud integration services. not always "cloud", just because it is the "in" concept at the moment. We search for a solution that best fits the customer's business situation, processes and existing IT landscape. So it's less about products in the first step, and more about helping customers best approach the issue of cloud computing? Exactly we work with the customer and target the business aspects first. On the one hand, we offer professional services in which we discuss with customers their business options in terms of cloud computing regardless of whether they want to define an overall strategy, or are just looking to define next steps. And in addition, our outsourcing team supports customers with products for hosted cloud concepts. We provide cloud infrastructure along the whole cloud stack, IT provisioning and system integration. What does "hosted cloud" mean? Basically, it is a virtual private cloud, where we host the private cloud environment in our data centers based on dedicated hardware. This might not be the cheapest option, but it is much more secure than using a public cloud and has the same advantages as hosting compared to... Jordan Janeczko, Global Technology Manager, Siemens IT Solutions and Services running your own private cloud. Cloud computing provides virtualized computestorage resources within modern web technologies, IT infrastructures, platforms and applications as on-demand services which are very scalable and networkcentred. Highly automated processes are purchased by a pay-per-use model. The customers always know where their data is, right down to machine level. It provides a measured and secure approach to cloud computing. In this kind of environment, cloud computing rules and tools are applied and the customers learn how to integrate their workflows and processes with the highly automated processes in the cloud. The journey into the cloud always begins with the ability to cope with automated processes. Sharing of infrastructure is just one part of cloud computing; automation and virtualization are the other important factors. Service-oriented architectures offer components with independent services to be orchestrated flexibly. Often these services are orchestrated beyond business processes, where the customer defines the number of use and exchange of data. This offers a variety of shared usage of resources on top. What innovations and special qualities does Siemens IT Solutions and Services offer when it comes to cloud computing? Integration is one part of this. By integration we mean the integration of cloud concepts into existing IT landscapes. Other vendors just offer infrastructure or applications in the cloud, but they don t take into account the legacy systems customers already have. In contrast, we offer integration concepts and services for various platforms such as those of our premiere partners, Oracle, Microsoft, SAP VMware, and others. Together with these partners, we develop holistic solutions for the customer. We also integrate the vertical or industry-specific process levels. For instance, we are able to build community clouds. Here, we apply the basic cloud principles in order to streamline processes across different organizations. We can carry 2

3 out various processes that customers of a given community cloud can hook into. We realized that for instance for the healthcare industry with the healthcare portal Assignio. There we bring patients, doctors, hospitals and other healthcare players together. We can provide that for a range of industries. And because we have this deep vertical process knowledge we can provide the business cases and use cases proactively. Can you give us another example of this kind of approach? Let me take an example from one of our other strategic vertical markets, the public sector. We are working with the local authorities in Berlin to develop a cloud-based service for people looking to move to Berlin. As part of this private-public partnership, we are bringing together various services, from local tax or registration offices to private services such as relocation, TV, phone and other domestic service offerings that everybody who moves to Berlin could use. The requirements have not been defined yet, but you can see the possibilities that implementing this type of project as a community cloud would create. There are a lot of interrelated processes that everybody would love to automate. Just think how easy it would be to deregister in your old city and register in the one you move to. You can do this online and once authentication and authorization has been provided, the registration office can automatically order your files from your old town. Can you expand a little on your cloud portfolio? We always talk about consultancy work and solutions. The solutions are customized to a customer's particular needs. Take for instance Rapid Aid. This solution is designed to automatically distribute software updates or other content that is centrally managed and used in various regions or even worldwide. These can include smart phones, laptops but also any other device that needs additional content or software updates to work properly, like modern digital X-ray equipment or industry robotics. We use Microsoft's cloud infrastructure product Azure, which stores the updates and informs the mobile devices that there is new content to be downloaded. But Microsoft's Azure is only used as a transfer station to distribute the content. Everything else developing, billing, management is done onsite at the customers. The beauty of this solution is that customers can distribute content worldwide at low costs and can manage their distributed devices securely and centrally without any local support. It is also a perfect example of a hybrid solution, in which cloud products such as Azure are integrated with a customer's existing central systems. Take a CT scanner in a hospital that gets its software updates automatically, without downtime and without local support. The hospital's administrative staff simply have to order or authorize the updates. This example is a good illustration of our strength in the cloud arena: we can provide secure hybrid solutions that are tailored to a customer's individual requirements. Our collaboration with partners such as Microsoft, Oracle, VMWare and others ensures that we can always offer our customers the best technical solution on the market. Does Siemens IT Solutions and Services offer its own cloud infrastructure or does it focus solely on consultancy and integration? Yes, we offer infrastructure and platform as a service, for example in the form of a secure virtual test and development center. The cloud infrastructure is provided by VMware, while the test and development tools come from Oracle and others. This cloud environment provides virtual workplaces for developers and testers. It is on demand and pay as you go, and provides customers with a very flexible environment that enables them to save time and money in the development and test stages. We provide standard tools in this area but can also offer customized development tools and test settings The value of a test cloud is plain to see when you consider load testing. There are a lot of tools for this task, but it is always difficult and laborious to simulate a lot of clients to put load on the application. A test cloud provides both, the tools and the virtual clients to bombard the application with requests. Functional tests can also be performed easily in this environment. The time and costsavings aspect also applies to developers, who find ready-to-run workplaces here or can easily configure them to their individual needs. Moreover, it is easy to add developers to a team, even if they are freelancers or from a different company. We are already in talks about this test and development cloud across Siemens, at insurance companies as well as financial institutions and banks. Do you think about other workplaces that you want to provide out of the cloud? For instance, a sales workplace or an HR workplace or similar? We have lots of products that we have for different workplaces, so let me take another example from one of our target verticals our Dynamic Product Life Cycle Management (PLM) Services for industry customers. The on-site version is a Siemens product called Team Center. We adapted it to create a cloud service and now offer it as a platform service, in which we take care of the infrastructure, application life cycle management including patch management, and many other things. The customer only has the front-end. This gives them flexibility with PLM, something that is particularly important for smaller 3

4 organizations. In this context, we also offer help desk and other administrative services, thereby enabling smaller companies to manage their product life cycles as well as big companies do today. For instance, a mid-sized fashion producer in England is thinking about adopting this approach to manage its supply chain. An on-site solution would never have suited the company because it would be too expensive and too big for them. Weʼre looking forward to doing this with other customers and their products, too helping them take a product and bringing it into the cloud. Does SAP as a partner play an important role in your cloud portfolio? SAP is an important software vendor for Siemens IT Solutions and Services and that's why we decided to get SAP cloud certification as well. They are adopting their licensing for green-field cloud approaches, but we are already able to provide flexible cloud infrastructure and services to existing SAP customers. Standardization of applications, infrastructure and processes means fewer integration services are required. Where do you think the market is headed? We don't believe that this trend will take place in all areas and we don't see everything moving to the cloud. So in the years to come we expect to see a strong increase in demand for integration between cloud and onsite services. We position ourselves as a value-added cloud integrator and broker We at Siemens IT Solutions and Services are well positioned for these tasks with our hybrid offerings, our security and integration expertise and our vertical industry knowledge. We believe the need for integration will increase rather than diminish. For instance, there are no common cloud standards. The SAP cloud is different from the Microsoft, the Oracle or the IBM cloud. And because companies will always work in a heterogeneous IT landscape, there will always be the need for integration. And we don t stop at integration. We also add additional value for our customers, as shown by our cloud offerings such as PLM on demand, the test and development cloud, RapidAid and SAP on demand. We position ourselves as a value-added cloud integrator and broker. We will also offer a kind of app store a portal in which we provide our customers with pre-tested applications for enterprise environments in different industries. These apps will not necessarily run in our data centers, but we will provide the security, billing, help desks and other associated services for integrating them. Our aim here is to act as a cloud aggregator or broker to take away the headaches that our customers would have if they had to do this all themselves. n Analyst View It was pure-play public cloud providers such as Salesforce.com and Amazon Web Services that prepared the way for the broad emergence of the cloud model. But the cloud concept is about much more than just the use of single solutions via the Internet. Cloud computing will significantly change the way IT resources are delivered and accessed in the future and represents a way of provisioning and using technology, not a technology in itself. In the foreseeable future, we will therefore see a coexistence of very different cloud approaches based on a variety of different technologies and solutions, ranging from internal implementation of cloud architectures to outsourced private clouds, public cloud solutions, as well as combinations of diverse architectures. Karsten Leclerque, Director k.leclerque@pac-online.com This poses completely new challenges for IT users looking to fully exploit the benefits of the cloud concept. A lack of transparency regarding existing offerings and their specific characteristics, e.g. with regard to security issues, as well as a lack of standards and interfaces make sound decisions difficult and results in complex IT architectures. As a leading IT services supplier specializing in the area of technology integration and operation, Siemens IT Solutions & Services is well positioned to accompany customers on their "way to the cloud" as a partner to the customer rather than a mere component supplier, like most pure-play cloud providers. Siemens IT Solutions and Services is product-independent with regard to technologies and concepts, but has partnerships with all leading technology providers. This technological competence, combined with deep vertical know-how in various industry sectors, allows Siemens IT Solutions and Services to implement an architecture that best meets the customer's individual requirements be it a purely on-site solution, an outsourced private cloud, integration of public cloud solutions or a combination of all these things. 4

5 About Siemens IT Solutions and Services Siemens IT Solutions and Services is a premium European-based provider of advanced IT solutions and outsourcing services with global reach. Bringing together industry know-how, practical innovations and a feel for business, we enable cus-tomers to continuously transform their operations with Business Technology. With a workforce of more than 32,000 employees, Siemens IT Solutions and Services generated revenue of 4.2 billion during the fiscal year Over 75 percent of this came from outside Siemens. Our success is built on a company culture encompassing five essential principles: entrepreneurship, customer focus, accountability, excellence and leadership & people. In December 2010, Siemens and Atos Origin announced their intention to form a global strategic partnership. It is planned that Siemens IT Solutions and Services will join Atos Origin in Summer 2011 to create a European IT Champion. Portfolio The portfolio of Siemens IT Solutions and Services ranges from consulting, software deployment and system integration to the comprehensive management of IT infrastructures and outsourcing. Our portfolio at a glance: Trusted Cloud Civil & National Security Seamless Government Future Work Environment Smart Energy Secured Enterprise IT Transformation Integrated Manufacturing Applied Knowledge Our offering encompasses comprehensive and sector-specific Business Technology for industry, energy and healthcare. In addition, we offer an extensive range of services and solutions for public organizations, financial services providers, as well as telecommunications, media, transport and technology companies. 5

6 Trusted Cloud As linear business processes evolve into dynamic networks, cloud computing can deliver unique flexibility and scalability to the business if the cloud is designed, implemented and managed as an integrated and secure extension of the IT base. As your business world changes faster than ever, cloud enablement can contribute unique advan-tage in innovation and collaboration beyond greater IT efficiency in itself. Provided, of course, you can master the complex challenge of extending core processes to a cloud-based environment. Siemens IT Solutions and Services is uniquely suited to understand the real-world business challenge of making cloud secure, compliant and scalable for enterprise use. Our Trusted Cloud offer-ings bring you the optimal cloud models for any business scenario. Trusted Cloud is a unique strategic approach to these driving business questions, and comes to you from a uniquely positioned partner. Siemens IT Solutions and Services are the Business Technologists, placed between industry-specific business needs and the full range of technology capabilities. Trusted Cloud is a fully thought-through set of answers from finding your way to the cloud and integrating it with legacy to running it effectively over time and accessing the unique innovative potential of Community Clouds built on specific sector needs. Whether you are already involved in cloud implementation or interested at first in creating a private or hybrid cloud of your own, Siemens IT Solutions and Services has the industrial DNA, multi-vendor capability and geo-graphical reach to differentiate cloud performance. About Pierre Audoin Consultants (PAC) Pierre Audoin Consultants (PAC) is a global market research and strategic consulting firm for the Software and IT Services Industry. PAC helps IT vendors, CIOs, consultancies and investment firms by delivering analysis and advice to address a range of growth, technology, financial, and operational issues. Our 30+-year heritage in Europe - combined with our US presence and worldwide resources - forms the foundation of our ability to deliver in-depth knowledge of local IT markets, anywhere. We employ structured methodologies - undertaking thousands of annual face-to-face interviews on both the buy and sell side of the market, as well as a bottom-up, top-down approach - to leverage our research effectively. PAC publishes a wide range of off-the-shelf and customized market reports - including our best-selling SITSI program - in addition to our suite of strategic consulting and market planning services. With 16 offices across all continents, we deliver the insight that can make a difference to your business. For more information, please visit our website at 6