Cloud computing has delivered on its promises - and then some. But for the early adopters, there have been a few surprises along the way.
This is according to Andi Mann, VP of Strategic Solutions at CA Technologies.
Mann says he sees customers daily who have realised some - or even all - of the promises of cloud, including cost reduction, faster time-to-value, easier management and improved mobility.
“That said, it is not always easy, the results are not always as expected, and they don't always happen straight away. For example, many of my customers have found that while they are getting fantastic speed and efficiency benefits from cloud, the cost reduction is nowhere near what they expected. Others are finding the ongoing operation and management even of low-touch SaaS applications is more of a burden than they expected,” he says.
Mann says the expectations of cloud have changed since its early hype three or four years ago.
“The biggest expectation was about ROI, with the assumption that cloud would save money, and especially that cloud would replace on-premise computing. I think we are more realistic now, and realise cloud is not always about pure ROI, but more about a broader definition of value - including agility, speed, mobility, scale, focus and other values.
“Certainly now, most large enterprises and governments I speak to realise that cloud options - whether IaaS, PaaS or SaaS - are just another capability in their arsenal; that cloud is in fact additive to their pool of IT resources, not a complete replacement,” says Mann.
Cloud surprises
Mann says the cost implications of cloud computing have proven the biggest surprise to adopters.
“Initially, cloud (especially public cloud) was touted as a cost-saving option, and it certainly can be, but a lot of my customers have found this was not always true. One customer in particular ended up with a massive off-budget liability caused by the unauthorised use of company credit cards to pay for cloud services,” Mann says.
Ha says the security and availability misses have been a shock to many, too - the fact that Amazon, Salesforce and other cloud providers have had multi-day outages has his customers rethinking their approaches to cloud.
“As it turns out, large enterprises are frequently pretty good at running IT systems, and do it reasonably efficiently - often better than cloud alternatives. While cloud offers a lot of other advantages, the difference in overall service delivery costs - especially when you factor in capabilities in place to ensure security, reliability, continuity and more - is not as much of a challenge as we initially expected.”
Maximising it now
Mann says maximising the value of the cloud depends heavily on adapting enterprise applications and services to the unique capabilities and requirements of a cloud approach.
He notes that existing applications, processes and teams were designed for a different set of infrastructure assumptions.
“Availability, reliability, cost, performance, security, continuity and more all rely on existing tools and approaches to infrastructure management. However, with cloud, the infrastructure is abstracted, so you need to take a fundamentally different approach to these operational requirements.”
Getting full value also depends on getting past barriers such as security, availability and decision-making, he says.
“Security is a clear barrier, and the risk of breaches, exposure, data loss, penetration, compliance failure and more is still the top reason enterprises shy away from cloud.
“Many of my customers have taken the low-hanging fruit [approach] to the cloud, like new Web app development or non-core systems like e-mail, and [are] now at a crossroads. Without the information they need, they are now finding it hard to make a good decision about what applications should go to the cloud, what applications should stay in the data centre, and how to best adopt SaaS, PaaS, or IaaS,” Mann says.
Mann will visit SA to address the second CA IT Management Symposium, at the Sandton Convention Centre, on 4 September. For more information about this event, click here.
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