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CIO Series: Cloud Still a Dilemma

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DQI Bureau
New Update

After three years of speculation and debate over the pros and cons of the cloud platform, the IT industry is finally finetuning the vendor-driven concept of cloud and has come to accept the fact that cloud is no more a buzzword for them now. However Indian enterprises have now started taking baby steps to test the deep waters either by initially moving their non-critical applications on to the cloud or are still toying with the idea to use it.

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Overall, the CIOs unanimously agree in keeping the current paradigm shift in the manner technology is contributing to every organization and industry; it is becoming crucial for them to proactively adopt this dynamic platform and avail its wide spectrum of services. But simultaneously they have also expressed concerns of consciously identifying how cloud can address their actual business needs, rather than just adopting under the hype created by the vendors in the market. We agree to the recent findings of the Gartner study on the maturity of cloud platform that it is an expensive and a risky proposition, therefore, we are very careful keeping our size and volume of business in mind, says DD Mishra, head, IT, Vodafone Essar.

Jishnu Kinwar, vice president, tchnology, Eko begs to differ, as per him although cloud is clearly a very well-distributed platform, which allows convenient horizontal scaling, but still its an expensive proposition. However still to a large extent, decision to embrace this platform rests on the management as their concern over outsourcing their control of IT, confidentiality of information, and return on investment puzzles them.

On analyzing the criterion and parameters for cloud, which the CIOs are proactively doing to convince the managementconnectivity, security, and cost are the key driving factors. For the small- and medium-sized businesses, most of the CIOs echoed similar opinion that it is absolutely essential for them as cost benefit is very high in comparison to bigger organizations.

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Mist Around the Cloud

Since cloud computing is a platform for ensuring convenient, on-demand network access to the shared pool of configurable computing resources, ie, network, servers, storage, application, and services, which can be rapidly provisioned without much effort of vendors interactions; the benefits of the cloud, theoretically or in reality, is enormous, as per Pulak K Tarafder, senior general manager, IT, McNally Bharat Engineering. So on probing many CIOs, to actually analyze the market acceptance and maturity of the market, only 2 CIOs have implemented the cloud while the other 5 are still assessing and waiting for the maturity. Few concerns that are at the top of these CIOs minds are:

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1. Control Over IT/Security: Users are still not very convinced with the security of the data and applications; so there is a need of a security model to convince the top management over the control of confidential information to avoid unauthorized usage of data.

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2. Connectivity: This is a major issue for those companies that handle large volumes of critical data and any downtime may effect them severely. As on date, the average uptime of cloud computing is around 99.85%, which seems good, but in reality 0.15% downtime may be a big factor for any company. Still cloud vendors are not taking into account the cost of downtime or pre-scheduled downtime.

3. RoI for Critical and Non-critical Applications: Different vendors are quoting different costs for an hour per user in a standard configuration. So, depending on the technology, applications, services, and business needs, this cost may go very high. Thus, IT heads are considering cloud price normalization (CPN), which is a cloud resource that one can buy at per unit currency for example, it is $1,000 in the US.

4. Productivity: Bandwidth issues and the kind of applications running in an organization are still hampering many companies from realizing the complete potential of the cloud computing.

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5. Integration: The biggest challenge, which the CIOs face, is the seamless integration of applications on cloud with the application running on some other infrastructure. Furthermore, it is also equally difficult to find sources with optimum skills and knowledge to ensure smooth operations or handle any discrepancy.

 

6.Reverse Integration Methodology: Many companies are pondering over the fact that once they move few applications to the cloud, what is the solution, in case they are satisfied with the results. We are in testing cloud with few applications, but we are also assessing reverse transition methodology to revert back from cloud to the infrastructure, informs Mishra.

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7. Disaster Recovery: Vendors still dont provide a precise picture about the data backup, data theft, restoration, or any kind of disaster recovery. As a result, companies are taking long to develop confidence for this platform.

Selection of Type of Cloud and Applications

Adopting or using cloud also depends on various factors: The kind of business an organization is doing and the size of the organization. Cloud platform, especially public/shared cloud, is a very good proposition for a start-up, which cannot invest a lot or at all in its IT infrastructure. Large organizations prefer private or hybrid cloud owing to their size and volume of business along with data security in mind like Amazon and airtel. Many companies have implemented private cloud like Birlasoft, Google, RPG, and NIIT.

 

On cloud it is easy for us to scale up and downsize the number of applications, as per the need, in times like e-filing of income tax during the last month/week/day of September, says Kinwar. Another interesting example of AaramShop, which is a retail start-up, whose most of the critical modules are on the shared cloud based model along with few mobile applications integrated with a call center. Cloud platform helped us to scale up operations from 50 outlets in 1 city in June 2011 to 650 outlets in 18 cities, says Ritesh Raj Gupta, vice president, technology, AaramShop, while substantiating the point of cloud effectiveness for the start-ups. We will be implementing a private cloud in future to align the IT strategies of our 5 companies, after being satisfied with RPGs cloud experience, informs Niranjan Bhalivade, chief information officer, CEAT.

On the other hand, Kinwar also highlighted the fact that cloud is not a very cost-effective proposition for a speedily growing organization, as they need regular upgradation. In that case, cloud is not a complete solution, but if coupled with some internal IT infrastructure and few non-critical applications on cloud, then it can be a suitable option to address this issue along with securing data and confidentiality issue simultaneously. The recent Gartner study has also been taken very seriously by the companies, which was evident from the wait and watch attitude of few senior IT experts.

As current cloud offerings mostly focus on Open System or Microsoft Technologies or Linux based solutions. ERP or Applications that are running on AIX, Solaris, HPIX, etc, may not be available in the current offerings. All applications and legacy system cannot be ported directly without migration to the cloud, informs Tarafder on the present migration status of the critical applications. So only few that too non-critical business applications companies can move or can consider moving on the cloud whose data theft may not harm the organization in a major way.

Cloud Skymap

Cloud and its vendors have to go a long way in terms of providing clear terms and conditions regarding the security, disaster recovery, licensing, and backward integration to convince the companies. Vendors need to come up with better propositions like packaged private cloud implementations, which cater to the vendors public cloud service technologies (software and/or hardware) and methodologies.

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