What Factors Will Prohibit Organisations From Moving To The Cloud?

At the recent International Cloud Computing Conference And Expo in Santa Clara, US, a number of large enterprises including the CIA presented on their approach to creating a private cloud and the challenges they faced along the way. 

The same underlying message came from all speakers – developing a private cloud takes time, significant investment and requires high levels of automation in order to achieve the required ROI. Some of the other challenges that can be expected are listed below:

Initial CAPEX and ongoing infrastructure refresh, Buy in at all levels, Extensive planning, High levels of automation, Significant operational investment, Complex tool and platform selection, Limited in-house skills and time.

In the case of the CIA, it has the size of IT infrastructure that enables them to provide the economies of scale associated with cloud computing, whilst its strict security requirements meant its only option was to develop a private cloud.

The Virtual Private Cloud……..or why not Federate!

It would seem for most enterprises the IaaS Public cloud is still too immature and the initial capital/operational expenditure and time required to develop a true Private cloud potentially outweighs the required ROI. 

It’s not all bad news however, many hosting providers and Telco’s are bringing enterprise grade Virtual Private Cloud offerings to market. These offerings place the burden of Capex and Opex onto the service provider but provide the end user with utility computing aligned to needs of the enterprise.

In reality there is no one solution that fits all. Over the next few years more and more organisations will adopt a federated model, taking advantage of SaaS out of the Public cloud and IaaS from virtual private clouds.