Cloud Computing Moving Behind Hype To Real-World Use

Midsize and larger enterprises are already deploying cloud computing, sometimes openly and sometimes on the sly, as the concept of working in the cloud is starting to move beyond the hype stage.

Cloud computing is still in its early stages, but adoption of the technology is coming fast, according to a panel on cloud computing held at the Nth Generation Technical Symposium, a three-day customer event held this week by Nth Generation, a San Diego-based solution provider.

IT managers from nearly 200 midsize and larger enterprise customers, mainly from Southern California, interacted with a panel of executives from six vendors working with solution providers to build cloud infrastructures.

Nearly half of the audience members believe that cloud computing has moved beyond the hype phase, with private cloud cited by 23 percent of the respondents to an on-the-spot electronic poll as their primary use of cloud computing, followed by 16 percent who cited software-as-a-service, eight percent who cited co-location, and six percent who cited infrastructure-as-a-service. However, 42 percent said they are not doing any services on the cloud.

Scott Crenshaw, vice president and general manager of Red Hat's Cloud Computing business unit, said cloud computing today is still in the early stages of disruption.

"It's not dissimilar to the early days of Linux," Crenshaw said. "There was a lot of experimentation under the radar before Linux moved to the big screen. Customers have been experimenting with the cloud for two to three years."

A lot of enterprises are investing in private clouds, or at least in shared services that can be moved towards the cloud, said Nick van der Zweep, director of virtualization at Hewlett-Packard.

There is actually a lot of experimentation going on in cloud computing, said Steve Herrod, CTO and senior vice president of R&D at VMware.

"I tend to find that when companies say they are not in the cloud, that one or two people are already working around their IT department and moving in that direction," Herrod said. "So if you responded 'no,' your company may already be doing it but you don't know."

Next: Test-Dev A Good Cloud Starting Point

For audience members using or considering cloud computing, 26 percent said in an on-the-spot electronic poll that their primary interest was for test and development, another 10 percent cited either test or development, 23 percent cited disaster recovery, and 12 percent cited Web services. Only eight percent cited production work as their primary interest.

Test and development is the best way to get started in cloud computing without impacting the operations of the entire IT department, Crenshaw said.

"A surprising number of our enterprise customers are using Amazon EC2 without their managers knowing it, and then expanding to more applications over time as they get used to the cloud," he said.

Chris Van Wagoner, chief strategy officer for storage vendor CommVault, said security concerns are still keeping customers from putting sensitive data such as health-care records on the cloud.

"Customers are concerned about what would happen if they got broken into," Van Wagoner said. "But if you lose a little test or development here or there, it's not such an issue."

Several panelists said customers will need to develop new skills in order to embrace cloud computing going forward.

Herrod said that organizations will need a combination of experience in internal IT and outsourced IT practices as well as in software-as-a-service in order to work in the cloud. "An IT staff will need to be able to look across all of these areas," he said.

Those three areas will also have to be managed as a whole, said van der Zweep.

"Customers will need to be able to look at what is best for private clouds, and what is best for public clouds," he said. "They will need to look at best practices and develop the skills to see what goes to the cloud, and what doesn't. Otherwise, they will lose control over what goes to the cloud."

Next: Developing VARs' Skills For The Cloud

Dan Molina, CTO of Nth Generation, said that for customers and solution providers alike, the skills needed to move towards cloud computing will depend in part on the use case which organizations will outsource to the cloud.

"The IT skills are probably going to have to be fine-tuned in relation to integration, to virtual infrastructures, because many different applications will have to be integrated to the cloud," Molina said.

There are many different use cases for the cloud, including software-as-a-service and infrastructure-as-a-service, and infrastructure-as-a-service will be the way to go to the cloud for applications which can be virtualized, Molina said.

"For applications which cannot be virtualized, there will be a lot of integration work required," he said. "And some of the cloud providers may not have enough skills to be able to help customers with that (integration). And that's how I see the VAR community needing to change their own IT skills to help customers.

Nth is already working with customers to assess their infrastructure and identify applications which are candidates for virtualization and moving to the cloud, Molina said.

"We also find the applications which probably make more sense at this point to leave on-premise," he said. "If (customers) want to switch those, there's other hosting services available, not just infrastructure-as-a-service. It may be co-location, or dedicated hardware in the cloud."