A Measured Approach to the Cloud

By Stephen Korow, DRC

Cloud Computing has already asserted itself as the trendy buzzword for 2010.  Everyone with a computer and an internet connection is touting cloud capabilities.  This is reminiscent of the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) frenzy of several years ago.  Every vendor had an ESB solution but the definition of what an ESB was differed for each vendor.  Coincidentally, each vendor’s definition of an ESB happened to align exactly with the features their products possessed at that point in time. 

Cloud computing is currently going through a similar hype cycle.  If a software vendor has a product to sell, they are looking for a way of associating it with “the cloud”.  Cloud computing has actually been around for more than a decade in various incarnations.  And, given the pervasiveness of the internet and the attractive economics of cloud solutions, new cloud capabilities and derivations will continue to appear at an ever-increasing rate.   

Because of the fragmentation of the various service offerings, it is difficult to separate value from hype.  There also still exist significant questions and deficiencies related to security, availability and control.  Fortunately, cloud capabilities come in all shapes and sizes.  Due to the nature of cloud services, you can tailor it to your specific requirements as well as change your utilization with minimal lead time. 

As stated previously, cloud computing has different meanings depending on who you ask.  It can imply Software as a Service (SaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and several other variations on the same theme.  Introducing your company to the nuances of a cloud framework by moving a non-essential process such as benchmarking or model office testing is a sensible approach.  Also, because of the low cost of entry, you can more easily move in and out of the space without incurring significant expenses. 

Also, a particular sensitivity of the financial sectors is heightened security requirements.  It is prudent to keep sensitive data under your roof until security features are more robust or, quite possibly, forever.  However, more and more cost-effective services will become available in the immediate future.  It would be imprudent to not move some processing to a cloud environment to take advantage of the economic advantage of the service.  Because of the need for guaranteeing data security and maintaining a certain level of computing capabilities, moving all services to a cloud environment is unrealistic.  For these reasons, a hybrid approach is recommended as providing the best combination of security, value and performance measures.  Under a hybrid configuration, mission-critical computing capacity as well as data is still kept in-house.  Periodic performance spikes and ancillary software requirements are satisfied on an as needed basis by accessing resources available through cloud vendors, either as PAAS or SAAS solutions.  During peak periods when resource requirements increase, such as at month-end and year-end processing or during the first few weeks of a new marketing campaign, cloud capacity can be accessed to satisfy the additional load.  As the demand returns to normal levels, utilization of the cloud also decreases. 

This provides a reasonable tradeoff of risk to cost savings.  Daily computing requirements are satisfied and security is maintained by in-house capacity while intermittent spikes in computing capacity incur expenses only for the cycles used.  Additional capacity doesn’t sit idle for the majority of the time and no initial purchase and ongoing maintenance expense is incurred.  This more closely aligns the cost with the benefit received for incurring that cost. 

Hybrid clouds also allow users to begin the process of utilizing cloud capabilities at very low risk.  As you become more comfortable with not having everything under your roof, you can move more and more of the workload to the cloud and realize the cost saving in personnel and hardware.  A slow migration to the cloud also provides time for the services to mature and consolidate, providing a common toolset so that services can be spread across multiple providers, providing redundancy and failover capabilities to you.     

At the end of the day, cloud computing will continue to grow, simply because of the economic efficiencies it provides.  Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, was recently quoted as saying that the company was “all in” regarding the move to the cloud.  The significance of the leader of desktop software making this admission should not be underestimated.  The migration to cloud services will continue unabated.  By taking a measured approach to utilizing cloud services at an early stage, you will have time to introduce your staff to the technologies available and establish a strategic plan for further utilization of the available services.