Cloud computing demands bandwidth

Companies investing in the cloud need to seriously consider making network upgrades to support the technology.

By Donna Donnawitz
January 6, 2012
Businesses are flocking to the cloud in light of the extended economic winter that is fueling migration to technologies that support operational gains while reducing spending. The cloud is proving effective to meet these needs, but many organizations are failing to properly support cloud computing deployments with the infrastructure necessary to enable consistent performance. According to a recent Computerworld report, this is especially evident in networking, as many organizations lack the bandwidth necessary to support the cloud.

To illustrate this, the news source told the story of the Intercontinental Hotels Group. Company CIO Tom Conophy told Computerworld the organization is embracing cloud computing architectures to improve productivity and operate more effectively. However, all of the cloud's gains will amount to nothing if the business is unable to properly upgrade its networks to support the cloud's needs.

"If your employees and your users can't access data fast enough, then the cloud will be nothing more than a pipe dream," Conophy told the news source.

To support cloud architectures, Conophy enacted a system that completely revolutionized the hotel group's network infrastructure to increase bandwidth and create an environment equipped to support the cloud.

Computerworld explained that the hype that surrounds cloud computing leads many organizations to focus solely on what the technology can offer, and not think about supporting it. This is a major problem because cloud computing requires bandwidth to transmit applications and other data-rich services to end users. If data packet transit is disrupted over the course of a long passage, such as data center to data center, it can lead to major performance degradation and possibly an outage.

Theresa Lanowitz, founder of independent analyst firm Voke, told the news source that overcoming this bandwidth challenge is dependent on moving applications and services out of an IT silo and integrating systems to figure out how they are interdependent and ensure networking architectures can handle data transmission needs.

Organizations making networking upgrades to support the cloud need to start in the data center. As more organizations turn to hybrid cloud environments, their data centers need to be equipped to handle increased amounts of traffic between servers and high volume data transmissions to users outside of the network. Supporting these initiatives requires a more flexible, optimized Ethernet infrastructure and, in many cases, advanced cabling and quality of service systems.

Perle’s wide range of 1 to 48 port Perle Console Servers provide data center managers and network administrators with secure remote management of any device with a serial console port. Plus, they are the only truly fault tolerant Console Servers on the market with the advanced security functionality needed to easily perform secure remote data center management and out-of-band management of IT assets from anywhere in the world.

Hi!

Have a Question? Chat with a live Product Specialist!

Have a Question?

We can provide more information about our products or arrange for a price quotation.


email-icon Send an Email
contactus-icon Send an Email callus-icon Call Us
×

Send us an Email