Saturday, 13th March 2010.

Cloud Computing discussions at SXSW

Written on Wednesday, 18th March 2009 by Neeta

Cloud computing

Clouds have figured prominently at SXSW at various forums. Amazon, Google and Microsoft are busy formalizing their strategies for what many believe future of computing, the cloud computing. At SXSW in the panel titled “Cloud Computing: Defending the Undefinable “, the bigger players, Microsoft’s Azure , Amazons’ Web Services and Google App Engine were up to defending the clouds.
Clouds are going to be the future of computing. Basically, the idea of having clouds, internal or external, depends upon the nature of business an organization finds itself in. The major players in the clouds just brush off security fears which are generally referred to whenever any discussions on future of clouds begin. Kevin Gibbs of Google had a good take on this issue. He asked “Where would you rather have your money: in your mattress or in the bank?” Let organizations concentrate in their core businesses and running servers and data centers be left to the guys who knows them best. Conceptually this was the reason which led to exponential growth in outsourcing sector. And this is the precise reason why Clouds will succeed.
All the three panelists admitted that they have been using clouds internally for quite sometime now. Panel also observed that the organizations should not be pushed in to clouds. Rather, the strategy should be two pronged. Have an internal cloud that can take load of legacy systems, statutory requirements and other confidential data. While external clouds can meet the collaboration requirements and data which is needed frequently and is not confidential. This kind of approach will help organizations to easily accept the clouds.
Data centers are synonymous with the word “efficiency”. Cloud computing by nature is green. There will always be energy efficiency when computing is done in clouds. Organizations who are in to cloud computing spend less on running their applications as they use servers “on demand basis” only. These organizations are not expected to maintain their servers 24×7.
Clouds have a future and now the whole world knows it. All big players in IT and Computing either have realigned their strategies or are in the process of doing so.