מאמר שהתפרסם ב- CUTTER

להלן מאמר שפרסמתי ב- CUTTER לגבי גורמים שמעקבים את הכניסה של cloud computing

http://www.cutter.com/content/itjournal/fulltext/advisor/2009/itj090114.html


Some Less Obvious Factors Curtailing Cloud Computing Progress
by Pini Cohen

Cloud computing is a prominent concept in the IT technology world. Cloud computing and software as a service (SaaS) promise fast return on investment, agility, improved scalability, availability, and more.

Large IT organizations are somewhat reluctant to embrace cloud technology, however. IT organizations claim that the security of cloud applications and their infrastructure are not as mature as their own and that they have less control with cloud applications than with traditional IT setups. For example, when planned downtime is needed with cloud installations, the cloud provider decides when to shut down the cloud for maintenance and the IT organization that uses the cloud cannot do anything about it. Another argument against cloud computing arises from the fear of vendor lock-in. Moving from one technology to another is complicated and expensive today. However, when the data is not in the organization's premises, it can be even more difficult.

Despite these arguments against cloud computing, the cloud providers mature quickly, and with the dramatic cost reduction potential (one number I've heard is that cloud installations are 10 times cheaper than traditional IT installations), I believe that even traditional IT shops eventually will embrace cloud computing.

There is another, less obvious factor that is slowing cloud computing adoption: the large IT suppliers! While the large IT suppliers (including IBM, HP, Microsoft, and Sun) do have official business offerings in the cloud -- both "private cloud" and "public cloud" -- there is also considerable opposition to cloud computing within these companies. If a large hardware supplier builds a private cloud for a large enterprise, it might sell that company a large integration project for building the "private cloud," but clouds are much more efficient than traditional IT installations, and that means the large enterprise will buy one-third or one-quarter of the hardware it would have bought without the cloud. The hardware group within the large vendor knows this and is unlikely to cooperate gladly with the cloud initiative. "Public clouds" (those in which external providers are used -- many times, offshore) are much more threatening to the hardware groups within large IT suppliers, since many of the public cloud providers are not based on "tier 1" hardware, and that means significant reduction of hardware revenues.

Although the vendors' marketing departments are aware of cloud initiatives, salespeople are not always aware of these initiatives and, more important, how they will influence their revenues and compensation. I have seen cases where the "services" salesperson tries to persuade large IT shops about the cloud concept, but the "hardware" salesperson tries to stop this initiative. This applies to the large software vendors as well.

The bottom line is that to be successful, cloud computing requires a big adjustment -- both with IT users and with IT suppliers. IT suppliers that do not address the internal opposition within their own organizations wisely and quickly will lose their leading position in the long run.

-- Pini Cohen

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