Targeting HANA at private clouds

Businesses looking to build private cloud services based around SAP’s HANA are liable to still face the traditional SAP-related problem of configuring the services that are required and implementing them without too much delay. But the announcement, earlier this year, that SAP was going to start delivering cloud-enabled implementations of the big data analytics system has opened the way for some of the company’s partners to short-circuit this problem and provide pre-configured services.

This approach packages up implementations pre-configured to the operational needs of a market sector together with the underlying technology stack – including strong security tools – needed to get as close as possible to a load-and-use service.

One of the early examples of this process in action has just been announced by Illinois-based American Digital Corp. It is about to start selling a managed services solution aimed at organisations in healthcare, financial services, higher education, and media industries that is designed to be deployed in private cloud environments by enterprises using managed SAP HANA software.

This development is an early example of what is likely to be a significant trend in the way delivery of applications and services, increasingly pre-configured to the requirements of a specific marketplace. This approach will help overcome some of the inevitable fears of established businesses for how they transition their business into the cloud.

“Although leading industry analysts such as Gartner are forecasting rapid growth of cloud computing, many firms are not sure of how to proceed with the planning process and the actual migration and deployment,” stated Bill Loupakos, vice president of professional services for American Digital. “Our portfolio of managed services for private cloud environments can help them overcome the complexity and also provide their IT personnel with the knowledge transfer they need to effectively manage their cloud applications.”

According to a Gartner research survey, by 2014, IT organisations in 30 percent of Global 1000 companies plan to deploy two or more cloud services for internal and external users, up from 5 percent today.

American Digital builds its Private Cloud and Managed Services on a four-layer solution stack designed to assemble infrastructure managed services into a computing “as-a-service” model. The stack’s foundation is based on infrastructure powered by HP hardware and American Digital integrates the necessary hardware as part of a monthly or annual service to each client. The second layer is a shared services layer providing base services commonly required by SAP HANA.

The third layer provides the necessary compute, network and storage resources for client applications. The company can also provide Professional Services to assist with custom design, migration and support.

The fourth and final layer provides strong security controls to protect client data, even beyond the client’s compliance requirements.

Service stacks can also be deployed within existing computing environments for on-premise service and utility, which allows businesses to develop applications in a known environment and migrate them to a private cloud at a later date.