Cloud computing: really useful or a load of hot air?

Are end users really all that interested in cloud computing and are any getting genuine benefits, asks Fleur Doidge

What is really beyond the cloud?

Free Software Foundation founder and creator of the GNU OS Richard Stallman famously said in 2008 that cloud computing is a trap, meant to force more people to buy into locked, proprietary and increasingly expensive IT systems.

“It's stupidity. It's worse than stupidity: it's a marketing hype campaign,” he allegedly told a London broadsheet. “Somebody is saying this is inevitable – and whenever you hear somebody saying that, it's very likely to be a set of businesses campaigning to make it true.”

Cloud computing has been repeatedly named as one of the top tech trends for 2010.
Yet Stallman notes also that businesses and other computer users generally prefer to retain control over their information, and that isn’t easy if you hand it over to a third party.

Meanwhile, recent surveys by analyst IDC and VAR Computacenter have indicated that cloud computing may not be as high on the business to-do list as the formidable wave of hype in the market would seem to suggest.

Cloud has moved down the list
IDC found that cloud computing has in fact moved down the list – coming in last when decision makers were asked which of 11 current hot buttons were appearing as more attractive areas for investment in the wake of the downturn.

While about 45 per cent said the tough times had increased their interest in virtualisation, only about 17 per cent cited more interest in cloud – and about 15 per cent said they were less interested in cloud computing as a result of the downturn.

Storage management was the second area where interest in investment had increased, with automation, unified communications, datacentre consolidation, service management, utility computing and security registering almost the same amount of increased interest. Green computing, and voice-and-data convergence, both garnered more interest than cloud.

Lionel Lamy, software and services research director at IDC, says only a third of business customers are now bothered about improving their overall IT service levels, down from half in 2008.

“The focus now is to keep the lights on – not to make improvements,” Lamy says. “Reducing the cost of IT has become a crucial part of the IT strategy for about a third of decision makers – up from about one in 10 in 2008.”

As reported in CRN [p19, 8 March], Computacenter’s poll found that half of respondents either did not know if cloud computing was important or said it was of little or no importance when it comes to improving the operation and cost-effectiveness of their IT environment over the next two years. Computacenter, however, thinks the responses may be much more positive when the cloud computing market matures.

Nevertheless, people like Scott Swanburg, director of the service provider programme at Citrix, maintain that more companies are looking to the cloud to host applications, servers and desktops.

“Three elements need to be considered to win over end users: simplicity, seamlessness and security,” Swanburg says. “And any good CIO knows that designing a system that has no basis in end user reality is doomed to failure.”

Moving to the cloud promises cost savings, greater flexibility and heightened manageability. It should seamlessly provide users with access to any application, through any device, from any location, via a familiar platform, says Swanburg.

Economies of scale possible
Duncan Little, managing director at cloud services provider BrightCloud, says there are generally other ways for users to get the benefits that cloud computing can provide. However, that does not negate the fact that SMBs without IT resources – especially if they are multi-site but still might find even a seven, 10 or 12-server refresh too expensive – can get genuine economies-of-scale for growth by harnessing hosted software or services.

“The first year, we started to build our own IT infrastructure and co-host customers on it. Now, I can’t tell you how many we have moved on to it. We have had some of our customers on there for three or four years, and have more and more racks full of this stuff, and as we have reviewed it, they have asked to stay on it,” Little says. “They like it.”

All customers that had moved to the cloud infrastructure have stayed put, despite opportunities for churn. Easy churn, Little says, is one of the end-user advantages – as long as you set it up right, with a stable methodology that you consistently use to migrate people on and off again.

“And for us, to build that infrastructure and share it across a number of customers really does reduce the cost,” Little says.

Cheshire-based IT consultant Graham Oakes recently transferred the payroll for his company from Sage running on a machine in the office to an online service provider.

“It’s cheaper -- the online service is cheaper than the licence fees for the software alone. Add in the savings in electricity, administrative overheads, etc, of not needing to run my own server,” he says.

“I can access the system from anywhere in the world, without needing to set up VPNs and stuff like that. I can access it from any device I choose. And it requires less administrative overhead – the service provider applies all the charges required to keep up-to-date with legislation and the like.”

Oakes believes most of the benefits are down to the service provider being a specialist set up to provide services at scale. However, he does perceive some risk: “For example, my payroll is now at slightly higher risk of being exposed to the world.”

It matters not to Oakes whether it is a ‘true’ cloud service or more an old-school payroll bureau as long as it is cheap, works and is as reliable as the local server, he says.

Down the track, the cloud makes it more likely that a wide range of services will become available. Service providers can focus on their strengths and let specialists like Google build the infrastructure for them, Oakes says.

Also, there is less pain involved in setting up new services, less lock in to service providers, and so on. And because services can be delivered to a much larger population, the economies of scale become larger and you get a virtuous circle: as cloud services succeed, they benefit from greater economies-of-scale and hence become cheaper and even more likely to succeed, he says.

“What’s always been possible has just become easier,” Oakes says.

Ian Cummins, vice president of EMEA sales at Network Instruments, says it uses cloud computing in the form of CRM behemoth Salesforce.com. “It is the life-blood of our company,” he says. “It touches every single part of our company.”

Small and even medium-size firms may have the skills but not the kit to have, for example, uptime around the clock, and find cloud to be a cost-effective answer. One problem for cloud users can be pinpointing whether a problem such as a system slowdown is local or in the cloud – but that can be fixed by harnes sing network monitoring tools, Cummins notes.

“You don’t go to cloud for little things when you don’t care if it is running or not. People are going to cloud for significant, business-critical applications,” Cummins says.

And then again, there is that broader view of cloud. As programmer, journalist, and one-time Freeform Dynamics analyst David Tebbutt notes: “According to many, clouds don't have to be outside the firewall. This means they could be in-house.

“At which point, the cloud definition starts to evaporate. Why bother with
it? Seems to me that it is simply software and other resources provided as a permanent or ad hoc service.”

Double-Take VARs given cloud incentive>> www.channelweb.co.uk/2258937