Cloud Computing is in danger of being over-hyped, reckons research firm Ovum (www.ovum.com), but CIOs need to avoid being taken in by critics and realise the potential - and the challenges - of The Cloud.
“Cloud Computing is starting to take a beating for being over-hyped vapourware – with virtually any online service being branded as ‘cloud’ to get on the marketing bandwagon,” noted analysts Steve Hodgkinson and Georgina O'Toole. “Don’t be fooled. There is substance in the cloud, and recessionary times will give CIOs new enthusiasm for seeking its massive scale economies.”
But Hodgkinson and O'Toole warn that there are challenges that need to be faced down. “The Cloud creates new management challenges more akin to those of the electricity grid,” they said. “Under an outsourcing deal a CIO can always, as a final resort, insist on enforcement of the terms of a contract and its service level agreement (SLA). But, if the cloud is like the electricity grid, then we know that an SLA is of little value during a major power outage.
“We take it for granted that the electricity grid occasionally fails. We also know that when the power is out we are usually not the only one affected. We light our candles or fire up the generator, and wait. There is little point in calling the service centre or insisting on your rights under an SLA when a whole city block or town is dark.”
But the case for Cloud Computing remains compelling, especially in the current climate. “As the effects of the meltdown in the global financial sector spread throughout the economy, the cloud will become an ever more important strategy for reducing both capex and opex – giving CIOs new options for responding to budget pressures in recessionary times,” said the analysts. “Cloud Computing can, and will, provide robust and reliable solutions for the enterprise CIO. However, it will require some new thinking from both the provider and client sides. The trick is to work out where these solutions apply, what new risks they create and how to manage them.”
There are also challenges for the vendor community as suppliers struggle to build or move to a Cloud Computing business model. These challenges include the need to meter service consumption and create cost-reflective charging; architecting pure, frictionless, virtualised applications that can truly scale seamlessly; and managing service blackouts and brownouts.
“These challenges, which have many similarities to those faced by electricity utilities, are the focus of significant R&D activity by the major cloud players aiming to develop solutions to enterprise concerns regarding cloud trustworthiness and business models,” said Hodgkinson and O'Toole. “For example, IBM is making substantial investments in cloud computing R&D; HP, Intel and Yahoo are partnering to create new cloud R&D centres; and Oracle and Intel are partnering on cloud infrastructure development.”
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