This morning’s focus in on the business case for cloud computing, ROI & migration. "What’s the promise? Despite the downsides, there’s little doubt that on-demand computing services are the future of both consumer and enterprise IT.”
First up in a panel discussion: The Case for Cloud Infrastructure: On-Demand Economics
Moderator:
John Willis, Owner, Zabovo
Panelists:
- Paul Mockapetris, Chairman and Chief Scientist, Nominium, Inc.
- James Urquhart, Cisco, Technology Strategist, Data Center Solutions team
- Neil Cohen, Director of Product Marketing, Akamai
- Joe Weinman, Strategic Solution Sales, AT&T Signature Client Group
Positions/fascinations with Cloud
James Urquhart – it’s a big deal. But, a big deal that is going take some time to evolve. Educate yourself on opportunities and risks related to cloud computing.
Paul Mockapetris – cloud computing is problem of showing no seams at all. security is challenge, faster you go, faster DOS attack can happen.
Neil Cohen – run applications at edge of internet, apply economics of cloud to applications you have running today that might not be able to move to the cloud.
Joe Weinman – synaptic storage management announcement yesterday. Finds area fascinating, so many things sound plausible, but not everything adds up. Can’t look at cost of internal vs. cloud compute alone, need to delve into drivers, might make sense to pay more per transaction for a scale transaction versus buying & managing equipment for partial (occasional) use.
ROI
Joe – Real benefits lie in spiky demand, “own the base, rent the spike”
James – Eli Lily story, recent webcast, spoke of using Amazon for research activities. Researchers came back and said “now, we need to rethink the way we do research projects”. Not having to acquire, setup, teardown thousands of servers gives the researchers flexibility in how, when, frequency to do work. [This is real agility].
Look at jobs with varying elasticity, batch jobs, data analysis.
John Willis – What’s missing in cloud story, and reports like McKinsey, is the “thinking outside the box” opportunities, such as Eli Lily. Speaks of story of organization moving data analysis to cloud on Hadoop because in-house Oracle dba not available. Now, IT (dba) exploring other opportunities on cloud, with Hadoop.
Some questions from the audience. Most are self-proclaimed cloud-newbies. (honest people)
Q: Is there an ROI calculator available?
Joe: Created one, it is at complexmodels.com
Neil: Reminds folks that it’s not a direct port to the clouds. Not all applications are cloud ready, and some (legacy) just can’t be moved. So, need to augment ROI calculations with implications for your particular application. [Dave Bressler did a good job addressing integration costs and the cloud at the Cloud Computing Expo]
Security?
James – the #1 enterprise concern for cloud computing is trust. ROI won’t matter if Trust issue isn’t solved. Recommends Hoff’s Rational Survivability blog to learn about Security & Cloud Computing. [me too]
ROI related to applications & PaaS?
Neil: The key metric is ‘time to value’. Can you deliver quicker with PaaS? Will the delivered application meet the business requirements?
Joe: better to 50% over budget than 50% late. Anything that allows you to deliver applications more quickly is of benefit.
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