Cloud computing for the Future

Michelle Bailey talks to Business Management about her forecast for the IT infrastructures of tomorrow.

The world of IT is evolving. Again. As the greatest transformation of the internet since it began, cloud computing is pushing a revolution in IT infrastructure for the modern business. And with good reason; the efficiencies that come with the cloud and virtualized data centers are being commonly recognized by businesses the world over as crucial to operations today. For a firm that spreads across multiple offices, states or even countries, immediate access to the vast quantities of important and sensitive data, without compromising security, could be potentially game-changing, not to mention the cost saving involved in the shift to a virtualized data centre.

The cloud has been steadily evolving for a number of years now, and as it begins to mature some the kinks that have hindered companies from jumping on board in the past are beginning to be ironed out. "By far and away, security is the overarching concern around public cloud environments," explains Michelle Bailey, Research Vice President for IDC's Enterprise Platforms and Data Center Trends unit.  Indeed, security is more often than not a firm's top priority when implementing any IT infrastructure. Whether it's highly confidential client data for, say, a financial institution or a healthcare provider, or simply sensitive company information such as payroll or staff recommendations, protecting company information is paramount. Bailey underlines this point: "That's one of the reasons why we at IDC predicted that the private cloud will have so much more momentum behind it because you can still control security in the same way you've always been able to control security."

Bailey's statement highlights a common feeling among organizations today. When it first emerged as a new and untested system many firms were cautious to fully shift their IT infrastructure into the unknown cloud. Soon industry heavyweights such as Google began to develop cloud-based programs and systems that were manageable and carried a familiar and trusted logo, encouraging wider participation across a variety of industries. Now, as the cloud becomes more recognized in the workplace and mobile devices, such as smart phones and tablet PCs enabled with Android technology, emerge onto the market, more organizations are identifying the benefits and establishing their own networks.

"I think it's easy for people to think of the public cloud because there are players that have such great visibility in the market like Google and Amazon, for example," explains Bailey.  "It's easy to understand what public cloud means.  What's fuzzier is this notion of a private cloud." Bailey goes on to explain that a private cloud provides exactly the same automated information service as a public cloud, but can be accessed from within a firm's own data center using the firm's own resources and remaining secure and confidential to that firm. "You could actually be going to a hosting provider, buying dedicated systems and infrastructure from them, but they are helping you to provide that utility pricing that goes back to your business," she says.

Cost cutter

A key benefits to a cloud system when designing a data centre are twofold: time and money. "I think it's all about money and it's all about economics," explains Bailey, "so if you're a public cloud provider, you can run a data center at a completely different cost point than you can a typical, internally managed data center.  There's very good reasons why they can get that kind of leverage, and it's because they tend to have fewer applications to support." Bailey goes on to highlight that a cloud based data center runs on a pay-as-you-go system, so parts of the data center that do not get used will no longer be wasted, an approach that both saves on overheads and improve energy efficiency.

The resounding reason behind the popularity of the cloud as a platform for today's enterprise data center is its specific customization for the businesses it is built to support, says Bailey, so companies can utilize the center to its maximum potential. As well as being able to eliminate redundant parts of the data center so as to reduce wastage, any individual firm can develop its own applications and programs for use across its data center, a time-efficient technology that could mean potentially huge bottom line savings for a multi-national company.

"Application development is another incredible use of public cloud," says Bailey. "If you have a need to build an application quickly, send it out to the public cloud, build it out there, once it's ready and you feel like it's ready to fall into the maintenance mode, then you can bring it back into your own data centers." She goes on to explain that those applications are economical in them selves, stating that the majority of enterprise applications appearing in the cloud today have a lower value.

The world of IT is evolving. Again. As the greatest transformation of the internet since it began, cloud computing is pushing a revolution in IT infrastructure for the modern business. And with good reason; the efficiencies that come with the cloud and virtualized data centers are being commonly recognized by businesses the world over as crucial to operations today. For a firm that spreads across multiple offices, states or even countries, immediate access to the vast quantities of important and sensitive data, without compromising security, could be potentially game-changing, not to mention the cost saving involved in the shift to a virtualized data centre.

Beyond the scope for company or industry specific applications, the cloud also enables a firm to share its products more quickly, whether that's using the public to share upcoming products with the market, or using the private cloud to share prototypes with other members of staff. "I think the more important driver around moving to a cloud strategy is about the time to market, is you have an element of your portfolio that you want to rapidly build out."

Looking to the future

Still a relatively young technology, enterprises across America still have a lot to learn from the cloud, but as Bailey explains, that can only come with time. "People will learn as they go with the public cloud, and there's going to be many failures along the way, but ultimately that's where an element of the market will be going," she says. She muses over the biggest drivers behind the development of the cloud as a business platform, going on to predict that the customers moving towards a private cloud data center will have a focus on standardization, but develop standards that closely mimic those that can be seen in public cloud in order to maximize the opportunity to federate in the future. However, Bailey says, "I don't know if standards are the greatest driver right now or the greatest inhibitor."

Ultimately, as with most revolutionary technologies, Bailey predicts that it will be a young man's game, with fledgling businesses that are flexible and bursting with innovative brains seeing the maximum potential for the cloud. "When I think about the cloud over the next five years and I think about the companies that will make best use of it, I think of newer companies that have new applications and don't have legacy environment they have to deal with."