This makes me look like a rock star — our cost
savings have been that incredible, in the 65%
to 70% range, and we’re only in year one.
BRANDON GAGE, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT OF TECHNOLOGY,
UNITED CAPITAL FINANCIAL PARTNERS
A recent Info-Tech Research
Group survey shows that 76% of IT
decision-makers will focus initially
— or, in the case of 33% of respondents, exclusively — on private
clouds. “The bulk of our clients come
in thinking private. They want to
understand the cloud, and think
it’s best to get their feet wet within
their own four walls,” says Joe Coyle,
CTO at Capgemini in North America.
But experts say a better approach
is to evaluate specific applications,
factor in security and compliance
considerations, and then decide
which apps are appropriate for a
private cloud, as well as which apps
can immediately be shifted to the
public cloud. More companies are
warming up to the idea that it’s not
an either/or proposition, and they’re
going with models such as the hosted private cloud or a hybrid cloud
that provides additional options and
flexibility. For organizations that
have major security and privacy
issues and don’t want to build their
own private cloud, there is also
the virtual private cloud, which
is essentially a gated community
within the public cloud universe.
“What companies really need to
do is look at each workload to deter-
mine which kind of cloud it should
be in,” Coyle says. “By asking the
right questions around criteria such
as availability, security and cost,
the answers will push the workload
to the public or private, or maybe
community, cloud.”
Company size and type of busi-
ness also make a difference, says
John Sloan, an analyst at Info-Tech,
an IT research and advisory firm.
He uses availability as an example.
“If you’re at a smaller company and
don’t have an N-plus data center,
then three-nines availability might
be good enough — it might even be
better than what you can provide
internally. So from that viewpoint, a
public cloud service will be perfect-
ly acceptable,” Sloan says.
