Cloud Bursting for Optimizing IT Environments

Session Date & Time: Day 3, March 25, 1.15pm EST (10.15am West Coast) (45min)
Keywords: Cloud Bursting, SaaS, Staff Management, Cloud Infrastructure, Human Capital, Tactics and Strategy.
Speakers: Moderator: Chuck Hobart, Solutions Architect; Chuck Rush, Director, ITIS; Tony Stone, Portfolio Manager/Solutions Architect, VMC Consulting.
Abstract: Cloud Bursting provides a solution for scaling between peak demand and running minimal IT environments with low fixed costs. Day to day IT activity for consistent businesses can be trended, but what about companies with great fluctuation and volatility in IT demands? Think banks on the 15th and 30th of the month, florists on Valentine’s day and Mothers day as well as most retailers on “Black Friday”. Historically, most of these companies build to about three quarters of business days managed in peak demand scenarios, but run IT operations at full capacity the remaining 25% of the time, losing money on unused capacity.

This Cloud Bursting model stems from the 1980’s manufacturing industry discoveries of drastically reducing inventory and associated costs by defining and monitoring process flow. When suppliers provided parts “Just in Time”, costs of maintaining millions of dollars in inventory, maintenance, logistics and square footage were eliminated. Using the Cloud infrastructure and defining the correct “看板, Kanban” (signals) it is possible to scale your IT organization to meet any demand while keeping fixed costs contained.

The “Just in Time” capabilities of the Cloud provide optimization for the business IT environment while paying for just the services that are used. This discussion will provide an overview of Cloud Bursting and the methodology to implement this solution.

Bios:

Chuck Hobart serves as Manager of Business Development/Solutions Architect for VMC Consulting. Over a nearly 30 year career, Chuck has brought vision to organizations to optimize the business, and technical expertise to deliver critical to business information securely, on time and at a competitive cost.

Most recently, Chuck founded the Hobart Data Center Consulting, a company specializing in government Data Centers. Chuck also led Washington Mutual’s Data Center Design team, where he worked in process development, capacity planning, metrics and business analysis, in addition to designing Seattle and Dallas area Data Centers.

Chuck also held a senior position at Microsoft, working as a Regional Design Engineer for Data Centers and designed and managed most of Microsoft’s enterprise Data Centers.

Prior to Microsoft, Chuck worked at IBM in an engineering, capacity, where he began building labs and Data Center facilities for IBM. Chuck started his professional life in geophysics, as a lead on a team that traveled the world with a borehole gravity meter.

Chuck Rush leads VMC’s IT Infrastructure Services with nearly 30 years in the IT data center management industry. He brings to clients his expertise in all facets of data center management and optimization, drawing on his experiences, to provide unmatched solutions for practical application to improve services and meet business goals.

Previously, as Director, Enterprise Technical Services, Chuck was responsible for orchestrating design and implementation of Store Network for the Advance Auto Parts 3000 retail stores network, data center and enterprise-wide computing footprint.

He spent over 17 years at McDonalds where he orchestrated the build out and management of over 75 plus data centers around the globe. He has managed global project teams located in Europe, Latin America, Asia, and North America. Chuck is based out of Virginia, however, travels the globe to serve our existing clients and partner with companies for new opportunities.

Tony Stone leverages over 30 years of service in management to VMC in the capacity of Portfolio Manager/Solution Architect for emerging business. Tony is passionate about the growing innovations in the technical world, and how it improves the ability of business, to do business. Prior to VMC, Tony spent the last 20 years managing labs and data center teams. His work has centered on finding efficiencies and process improvements for IT teams. A large portion of this work focused on helping labs increase their service offerings, while reducing operating costs. This work stemmed from The Paris Group, a company Tony founded and later sold, which provided consulting services, as well as operating several service delivery programs for retail, wholesale, and technical clients. Tony began his career in military service, with a consulting background focused on streamlining retailer operations.