Everest Group Launches Industry's First Comprehensive Cloud Economics Model for the Enterprise

DALLAS, June, 21, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Everest Group today unveiled the first assessment model to give enterprises a data-driven business case that identifies optimal IT workloads for migration to public, private or hybrid clouds as part of a comprehensive IT transformation.

The Everest Group Cloud Value Assessment Model™ (EG CVAM™)is used by the NGIT Practice to perform analytics on an enterprise's complete portfolio of IT workloads rather than looking at a single workload as an isolated test case. EG CVAM then models the comparative economics of replatforming those workloads for various cloud architectures.

Scott Bils, the Everest Group partner leading the NGIT Practice, noted that enterprises have had weak data upon which to make cloud migration decisions. "We see clients who might have done a small-scale cloud pilot project on an individual workload. Worse, some only have anecdotal data gathered from other organizations' cloud initiatives. What they've lacked is the ability to consider cloud for what it is: a transformative, disruptive IT technology. With EG CVAM, for the first time, CIOs and CFOs can look objectively at their entire portfolio of workloads and make a defensible business case that's based on hard data."

The analysis is supported by actual client cost data and by a database of cost information for public cloud alternatives. The NGIT Practice uses the analysis to prepare a technical evaluation of which workloads might fare best in a cloud environment. This results in a prioritized matrix that ranks workloads according to which ones are most attractive for public, hybrid or private cloud architectures, as well as software-as-a-service alternatives.

EG CVAM analytics are vendor neutral. The tool can provide sensitivity analyses that show how potential changes in vendor pricing would impact the business case. Workloads where cloud can generate cost reductions of 40-50 percent or more are targeted, as these are most likely to be worth the required migration and change management costs.

The NGIT Practice was launched to help Everest Group clients develop and implement an overall vision and business case for IT transformation. In the first step of the process, NGIT uses EG CVAM as a tool to help clients build a facts-based business case for which workloads should be moved to the appropriate cloud delivery model. In step two, residual workloads that are determined to be best left in a dedicated environment (e.g., mainframe or legacy client/server) are improved by leveraging next-generation data center technologies and models. In the third step, NGIT helps clients map out these strategies in the context of which IT functions can benefit from sourcing strategies such as remote infrastructure management outsourcing (RIMO).

Everest Group has already engaged several clients in the program, and the company is expanding the EG CVAM database to include cost data from a wider array of public cloud providers as well as legacy cloud and virtualization options.

For more information about Everest Group and its consulting and research capabilities, please visit www.everestgrp.com, email [email protected] or call +1-214-451-3000.

Event Notification

Everest Group will host a webinar introducing the NGIT Services Practice on Thursday, June 23, 2011 at 11:00 AM CDT. More information athttps://everestgrp.webex.com/everestgrp/onstage/g.php?t=a&d=924383753&SourceID=PR.

About Everest Group

Everest Group is an advisor to business leaders on next generation global services with a worldwide reputation for helping Global 1000 firms dramatically improve their performance by optimizing their back- and middle-office business services. With a fact-based approach driving outcomes, Everest Group counsels organizations with complex challenges related to the use and delivery of global services in their pursuits to balance short-term needs with long-term goals. Through its practical consulting, original research and industry resource services, Everest Group helps clients maximize value from delivery strategies, talent and sourcing models, technologies and management approaches. Established in 1991, Everest Group serves users of global services, providers of services, country organizations and private equity firms, in six continents across all industry categories. For more information, please visit www.everestgrp.com and www.everestresearchinstitute.com.

SOURCE Everest Group