„Cloud Computing will strongly influence the future of the IT. But it will take time before it become the main way of delivering IT,” said Mathieu Poujol in an interview with Storage.Biz-news.com.
Mathieu is a Director of Technologies at PAC (Pierre Audoin Consultants), a global market research and strategic consulting firm for the Software and IT Services Industry. He will be one of the speakers at 2nd Annual Cloud Computing World Forum that will take place in London, from 29th June to 1st July 2010
He thinks Cloud Computing has in fact being stimulated by the crisis: “it is a reality for the majority of the IT managers, according to our surveys,” he siad. He also said that in PAC’s latest recommendations for the EU’s Commission and the French goverenment, the research firm put CC as the top priority for the EU’s investments.
“With Cloud Computing, a big part of the IT is moving from light –workforce intensive- industry to a heavy –capital and automation- intensive industry. A bit like the automotive industry between the two World Wars,” he claims.
|
| Mathieu Poujol |
Asked about the business value of the cloud and how the economic crisis has changed it, he had this to say: “The goal of the IT since it exists is better IT Business alignment at lower costs. Trying to meet specific needs with cost effective mutualisation. Open Source, package applications, shared services and many more are all in this line. According to our latest studies, the business value of Cloud computing is optimisation, agility, simplicity and elasticity. So it is in the right sense of the IT history.”
Mathieu said that Cloud Computing is growing very fast in Europe–more than 20%, according to their data, and will reach 4B€ in 2010. “But it is still a huge marketing hype, with everything that is virtualised being called Cloud Computing. Companies will also see that not everything is eligible to CC,” he said.
He said he totally agrees with Ovum analyst Laurent Lachal’s opinion, that it’s becoming a hybrid system: for example, one creates his work on software on his PC, and then he saves it and shares it through the cloud. “IT Systems are by construction hybridizing technologies. If your SAP FI/Co is working well, why taking the risk and the complexity of putting it in the CC now?” said Mathieu.
When asked which of the deployment strategies and integration techniques he consideres the best and most promising for enterprises, he said: “As always in any IT project, planning is critical. Also try CC on some already mature workloads such as messaging then the best is to make your IT “CC compliant”, to adopt private cloud, so you ill be able to better use all kind of CC, and more important asses data, security and backsourcing issues. According to a phone survey we do in March on 200 French IT manager, 71% of them will first embrace Private CC.”
Mathieu also shared with us his thoughts on “private cloud”: “It will be either in-house or with a hosting company. As with traditional outsourcing, it is a good way to better use external cloud providers and not depend entirely on them.
With private Cloud you manage your data and your security and have less network problems. IT inside the company is heading this way as it is confronted to the competition of external providers.
Also, some regulations and security measures will prevent you from outsourcing some data: for example, none of Europe’s banks can put its client data out of its country of origin,” he said.
When asked “Would you agree that cloud services will replace the Microsoft desktop?”, he answered: “VDI will also grow by more than 20% and competition is more open now with interesting Open Source and SaaS offers. But MS has also this kind of offers and capacities to remain a leader on this market. What I see, it that this increase competition, mostly based on prices will damage MS margins.”
He also said that green IT and sustainable computing are not issues for the cloud today, “even if marketing is pushing it.”
“Cost optimisation is the issue and the CC mutualisation, a bit like public transportation, is greener,” he said.
Asked about the key challenge for 2010 in cloud computing, he said: “For the coming year, network will be the issue. No bandwidth, no CC.”
Mathieu expects to meet CC project owners and share with them at the 2nd Annual Cloud Computing World Forum in London.
Comments