Last week I found myself with several hours to kill (and sadly no wifi) in the Charles De Gaulle Airport in Paris. As I idled in the waiting area at the gate, I observed the organized chaos swirling around me and realized that the air travel industry offers a powerful analogy for the many enterprises facing the challenge of managing a hybrid environment.
Looking to my right, the gate check-in desk was abuzz with activity as airline employees processed seat changes, balanced baggage and passenger weight distribution, and re-booked passengers who had fallen victim to cancelled or overbooked flights. My plane had just pulled in to the gate and you could hear both the passengers and airline employees breathe a collective sigh of relief.
When a plane is on the ground, it is likely to be safe, secure and generally predictable- akin to an application that sits behind a company’s firewall. The “on-premise” systems located inside the airport, including the ticketing kiosks, check-in desks, flight status monitors, etc. are updated with the latest status updates for the plane and operations continue to run smoothly.
Once the plane takes off “to the clouds”- it takes significantly more effort to ensure that the aircraft remains on course and protect it from unforeseen challenges that it may encounter while in flight. As a result, an additional layer of “middleware,” known as Air Traffic Control, is critical in order to provide governance of the many airline “systems” in the cloud and ensure that they are integrated with those in the airports. Similar to an airplane in flight, applications and systems deployed to the Cloud pose new and unique challenges to the enterprise- in particular those who also run mission critical systems on-premise.
Join SAP for Virtualization and Cloud Week!
Although your business may not literally send systems to the clouds like those in the air travel industry, it is likely that you already have or will soon be deploying applications and infrastructure to the Cloud. At SAP we know it’s not all fluff, but serious business. SAP is hosting Virtualization and Cloud Week April 17-19 in Palo Alto, CA where you can learn best practices to support the development of a best-of-breed Cloud strategy for your hybrid environment.
Register here>>
Also you can follow the event on your favorite social media channels:
Twitter: #sapvweek #sapcloud
Facebook: http://onfb.me/SAPCloudSolutions
For those of you who will be able to join us, keep your eye on this session:
Thursday April 19th @ 2:3O PT
Three pillars of a working cloud model
Maik Schmalstich
Global Services Lead Virtualization & Cloud Management
SAP
When you intend to realize a cloud approach for your SAP and SAP centric solution landscape, you have to shape three pillars building up a solid “cloud house”: Successfully implement a state of the art on premise technical landscape, integrate on-demand solutions for fast answer to LoB needs and last but not least, implement an appropriate governance layer. This session will give you an overview of SAP’s insight; best practices and a recommendation of how to handle all these disciplines and create a well-working SAP centric cloud model.
See you there!
Brought to you by SAP Services.
