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Will cloud computing really take off?

In India, cloud computing is just another hyped technology, as the actual implementation is not really happening, reports Vinita Gupta

Cloud computing is about delivering massively scalable IT-enabled capabilities as service to external customers using Internet technologies, it is not another term for SaaS. It is a broad technological concept where some types of SaaS could qualify for cloud computing. Also, not all SaaS solutions leverage cloud-based computing.

Decreasing bandwidth costs and the high total cost of ownership (hardware and licenses along with sustenance), has made this trend worth exploring in some of the markets. In India it’s still some time before it starts making sense, considering the relatively high tariffs of bandwidth and the lack of consistent penetration across the country. Even the stability of links is still a long way from what is offered in US/EU with regular cable faults (fiber cuts) and last mile issues.

Still time to go

Cloud computing is a medium through which software services can be offered. Based on business models and compulsions to reduce costs as well as create predictability in IT budgets, this may become mainstream in the next two-three years.

Vijay Sethi, VP-Information Systems and CIO, Hero Honda Motors said, “Only time will tell whether cloud computing technology will take off or not, but in my sense it will take at least a few years before it makes any great inroads into India—even today SaaS which came almost 8-10 years back has not taken off in a big way. I think it would take at least three-five years before any substantial base for cloud computing comes up.”

Arun Gupta, Customer Care Associate and Group CTO, Shoppers Stop, mentioned that when and how organizations should move their IT infrastructure to the cloud computing world is purely a function of the current level of IT adoption within a company. If organizations are high on the maturity curve, they will find it easier to explore the cloud computing world. Organizations who are laggards could seize this opportunity to leapfrog their efforts on IT deployments. The rest will have to find gaps within their upgrade/ refresh cycles or high demand periods to assess how to fit in clouds into their architecture.

“Currently we are not using any cloud computing models. Our distributed business and the level of consistently reliable telephony networks pose a challenge towards adoption. Our experiments with SaaS have not been very positive due to challenges on both sides (vendor as well as internal). SOA will facilitate the adoption of cloud computing, but it’s a long journey,” said Gupta.

T G Dhandapani, Corporate CIO, SCL-TVS Group believed that the case for an organization to go in for cloud computing is similar to a decision to own or rent a house. Infrastructure under cloud computing environment in areas of network and security has to be much more robust than conventional IT infrastructure.

Sumit Chowdhury, CIO, Reliance Communications revealed that the concept of cloud computing was there from sometime but now people have started using it, especially SMBs as a hosted environment.

SMBs do not want dedicated environment and hence they preferred a shared infrastructure (whether a physical or virtual machine), enterprise have their own cloud, for instance they have their own storage and security systems.

Essential inclusions

With each complex software application and bit of data, pressure seems to be mounting on IT infrastructure, and increasingly enterprises look up to the clouds for help. In addition to infrastructure resources (i.e. hardware, software, power, space), with cloud computing, a company’s IT operation costs will go down significantly.

Gupta revealed that the complexity of the applications stack and the technology infrastructure is a function of how the organization has adopted IT. If this has evolved from disjointed silos and deployment of technologies over a period of time, then the complexity level is expected to be high, and in such a scenario, a transformation into clouds may be one of the strategies to review. However, if the complexity level is relatively low, then a strong business case will be required to make any change. Also, there will be a positive impact on operational costs if the bandwidth costs for connectivity were to come on par with the western world. Cloud computing will definitely have an impact in the long run on servers and storage, but not significant impact on end-user computers.

“Cloud computing will not necessarily change the way organizations do business but will definitely change the way in which IT functions in an organization. Benefits under cloud computing is enormous for an enterprise where the business processes are standardized in line with the industry and working under the same platform,” stated Dhandapani.

Chowdhury asserted that cloud computing will lead to overall efficient use of infrastructure and power as instead of per company having its own IT infrastructure, power and cooling solutions, they can use the vendors’ IT solutions.

Many issues

Not everything can come under cloud computing—as each organization has specific requirements whether on functionalities, performance, or may be even security/privacy needs that may be unique to the organization, and may not be supported through the public cloud. Secondly, it’s important for the organization to start small—understand the concept from a practical perspective and then decide whether to go ahead or not.

Sethi felt that cloud computing is a buzz word today and not many service providers actually understand it, and many just interchangeably use SaaS and cloud computing in their discussions. He added, “The mindset in the organization—not just IT managers’—needs to be aligned to the fact there will be a transition from on-premises to off-premises computing. E.g. while there are obvious advantage in terms of the fact that someone else is managing my day to day issues, but this has to be weighed against the fact that we are leaving the business-critical information resources in the hands of third parties.”

It is very difficult for an organization to adapt to cloud computing where they use highly customized application or home grown application. “Also, availability of robust network and information security is a challenge. From the Indian scenario the resistance to cloud computing may be in areas like accounting process,” Dhandapani.

Gupta mentioned that system integrators and software services organizations will have to look at alternative engagement models for acquiring and retaining customers. To end-user companies, it will pose a different set of challenges where standardization will have to be driven across companies as the cost of process change may be high. Conventional IT organizations will have to engage with internal customers as well as IT service providers at a different plane.

Cloud computing is going forward. Internet is today an integral part of our lives. Today even most children can relate more to Wikipedia then to the physical Encyclopedia, so it is really important that organizations use the power of the Web to deliver IT capabilities.

vinita.gupta@expressindia.com