BusinessCloud9 recently spoke with IBM UK Cloud Leader Doug Clark for a general catch up on the vendor’s Cloud strategy – a catch-up that touched on a number of critical areas for Cloud adoption.
On private v public Clouds:
“ We’ve seen a lot of press about public Clouds and we’re also seeing through our enterprise client base a lot of interest in private Clouds. Historically that’s where we’ve always operated. Those are firms who are very comfortable keeping their compute resources on premise. The real interesting thing coming up is a growth and an interest in mashing up that public Cloud environment and private cloud environment to come up the hybrid Cloud environment. What clients mean by hybrid Cloud is varied. On premise private Clouds will be fundamental but as client start to understand the capabilities of Cloud we establish with them that they don’t need all that tender loving care that you can get in a private Cloud; you can do some of the work in a public Cloud environment. You may want to put some of your services in the public domain and some will remain in the private domain. It’s about confidence. There are a lot of people who want to dabble with the Cloud. The public Cloud is a great place to dabble and to do development tests.”
On the role of services giants in the Cloud:
“ A lot of businesses are saying 'we're not so sure, we would prefer to have it on premises or to have a dedicated hosted Cloud’. Now that could be provided by your existing outsourcing provider or whoever. They still want to keep it very tightly controlled. They will use all the benefits of the Cloud, but they want all the rules of on premises. Those companies who can offer a full suite of services to clients have years and years of pedigree and all the scar tissue of working with clients over the years to earn that right. At the end of the day, you can argue that some businesses might be trying to protect their revenue, but at the same time they do bring a lot of experience and expertise and knowledge. Cloud is a journey. A lot of firms are looking at evolving outsourcing to a Cloud-based environment. ”
On when the Cloud is not the right answer:
“ There will be some bespoke applications that may not even move to the Cloud at all. It may be a mission critical application or maybe even a green screen application with no obvious migration path. They just may never be moved onto the Cloud at all. That may just be something you have to live with. Other environments, such as ERP or back office applications, are things you might want to host on premise or in a private Cloud. There will be other applications such as email, HR, order-to-cash systems and so on where you might want to go onto a multi-tenant Cloud. You need to do what is right for the client, the industry, the legislation and so on. ”
On Cloud and the public sector:
“ It will be horses for courses in the public sector. There will be a real attraction to shared private multi-tenant Clouds – sort of Club Clouds – within those parts of government where workloads are fairly common. I can see pools of government workloads being consolidated onto shared Clouds. These will be done at the right impact levels – iL3 or iL4 or whatever is required for that sector. I can also see areas where when we will be talking to a local government client and they want to be really innovative and not just be a Cloud buyer but a managed service provider. That is helping to drive some of the regeneration agenda. If you’re trying to stimulate entrepreneurs coming into your country, as they scale up they need more robust HR and CRM and payroll systems. We’re seeing local government saying ‘we can provide that as a service’. We host a significant number of public sector clients, all of them embracing the concept of the Cloud but still trying to find out the ways that they will use it to their advantage. I have not come across any agency or department that is resistant to including Cloud in their thinking. We are ahead of the game. There is definitely an appetite to try to do something different. ”
On why it’s not necessarily a Big Blue only Cloud future:
“In many many cases we are talking to clients where they have existing infrastructure and we are more than happy to build on that. In some cases it’s not IBM infrastructure and we can accommodate that. We are able to integrate the Cloud infrastructure so much more effectively than other players can. ”
