BACKPAGE rObErT clArkObscured by cloudsThe <strong>net</strong>work matters again, although it’s hard to tellwhere the <strong>net</strong>work ends and the data center andapps beginThe cloud is hot. Sizzling. Everyone wants in—evenvenerable telcos like AT&T.At a memorably uninformative press conferencein <strong>Hong</strong> <strong>Kong</strong> last month, the one thing that AT&T’s Asia-Pacific point man, Bernard Yee, was willing to share was thecompany’s keen interest in the cloud business.For once AT&T’s usual messaging about its gold-plated <strong>net</strong>workwas in the frame.Networks matterIn the age of the cloud, the <strong>net</strong>work matters again, althoughfrankly it’s hard to tell where the <strong>net</strong>work ends and the datacenter and apps begin.Indeed, AT&T rival Verizon Business has adopted a familiar-soundingslogan—“the <strong>net</strong>work as the platform”—as it aggressivelyseeks IT services and cloud contracts. Verizon bossFrancis Shammo hates to hear his firm called a telco, although(as a Yankee Group blogger points out) his offerings invariablyinvolve <strong>net</strong>work connectivity.But while telcos could bring a lot to the cloud, the spaceremains dominated by big IT firms like Google, Microsoft,Salesforce.com, Rackspace, IBM and Amazon.Cloud growth: clearThe cloud is already a big chunk of the IT services marketand is set for decent growth, according to Gartner. Last yearspending topped US$46 billion and is tipped to reach $150 billionin three years.IT services spending worldwide is expected to grow 5.6%this year to $821 billion, and in Asia-Pac IT spending overallwill expand 7%.In a Yankee Group survey, 75% of business had earmarkedup to a third of their IT budgets to the cloud. The Yankee Groupthinks this is low, but seems about right to me. Businesses areedging their way to the cloud, as they do with new platforms,rather than rushing to deploy.It’s telling that smaller firms are now jumping on the cloudbandwagon. That includes Asia. Yet another survey—by Microsoft—says67% of Asian SMEs are using hosted apps and30% are using the cloud.Most cloud spending is actually on private—that is, in-housedeployments serving internal customers—rather than the publiccloud, says Gartner. It expects private cloud services will bea stepping stone to future public cloud services and over timewill span both private and public cloud resources.“For many large enterprises, private cloud services willtherefore be required for many years, perhaps decades, as publiccloud offerings mature,” Gartner said.Nuts and boltsShifting to the cloud is a complex migration and the problemsare diverse.The first is legal. Microsoft has called on the US Congress tochange the law to deal with the legal issues thrown up by cloudservices, such as the location of where the data is stored.Security and privacy issues are especially challenging. Whathappens if there is a data breach on your cloud data stored in Indiaor the UK? Who’s responsible? Which legal jurisdiction applies?Then there are standards. A vigorous discussion is underwayover “open vs closed”. But Google’s AppEngine, Amazon’sSimpleDB and Microsoft’s SQL Azure are each locked intotheir respective clouds. A push is on for the adoption of standardslike Drizzle and Cassandra, but it will be some time beforethe industry achieves interoperability between massivelyscalable databases.One issue is the behavior of cloud providers themselves. Afterlooking at the terms of service and SLAs for 46 software-, infrastructure-and platform-as-a-service offerings from 41 <strong>vendors</strong>,Yankee Group concluded that cloud <strong>vendors</strong> offer “poor serviceguarantees and limited financial redress if their service fails.”Only half offer SLAs, and none offer financial compensationwhen they fail to meet them.“Get-out clauses are rife, and worryingly, robust privacypolicies are rare, potentially exposingenterprises to litigation. Enterprisesmust take a close look at the small printbefore they proceed, and develop proactivestrategies to get the best out ofcloud services.”There’s a swathe of advice on theweb about migrating to the cloud whichcan be summed up as: go slowly. Startwith non-mission critical apps and data.Build a business case. Be clear on legalissues. Make sure you know where yourdata is being stored. Go slowly. 3Robert Clark isa <strong>Hong</strong> <strong>Kong</strong>basedtechnologyjournalist.rclark@electricspeech.comCMYCMMYCYCMYK42 Computerworld <strong>Hong</strong> <strong>Kong</strong> May 2010 www.cw.com.hk
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