AN INSIGHT into the buzz surrounding the concept of ‘cloud computing’ has been given to a local audience.
The much-talked-about technology is supposed to revolutionise computing in the near future and lead to huge cost savings for businesses, no matter what their size.
But in many cases it is still not understood in enough detail, according to Wayne Horkan, chief technology officer at Sun Microsystems, who is part of the UK Cloud Computing Forum.
He spoke to representatives from a range of Guernsey businesses on the subject earlier this week at an Itex Thought Leadership Event and outlined the benefits of adopting such a system, which essentially sees resources shared across a network where users pay only for what they use.
But even that definition does not do the technology justice, said Mr Horkan (pictured).
‘It’s much more than dynamically-shared services. It’s about economics and flexibility. The term cloud computing has been around for quite a while but it’s only in the last couple of years that things have started to change.
‘There’s been a convergence of technologies. People have become more used to outsourcing to partners and they are demanding more from their IT. They expect better levels of performance and availability and don’t want to have to wait six weeks, for example, for a new server to be made ready.’
For small start-up companies in particular, cloud computing can be a quick win and one that many new businesses are adopting.
They can avoid buying and running hardware and installing software in favour of contracting those services out to another partner such as Sun Microsystems so that they can run selected systems and applications on their infrastructure or virtualised servers.
The idea can be built on even further in terms of much larger companies which might look to create their own clouds or hybrid clouds so they can keep some things in-house.
But scepticism still persists in some areas relating to cloud computing and how it can be adopted into everyday business and how secure it is in terms of handling data.
Part of Mr Horkan’s forum role is to work with government to explain its potential.
He admits the UK Government’s focus on the subject is a lot lower than that of the US administration which already has sponsorships in place with cloud providers, but those who take early to the system will have an advantage in the future.
‘Early adopters of cloud computing are going to be able to familiarise themselves with its models and how they can derive value from it.’
Itex managing director Richard Parker said cloud computing had the potential to change the way businesses and individuals interacted with one another, much in the same way as the advent of the personal computer had done.
‘We at Itex along with many industry experts and pundits recognise that cloud computing represents a major shift in the way we use technology.’
He said Guernsey as an island needed to start taking notice of the technology as many of us were already using cloud services but might not realise it.
‘I think we are all trying to figure out in Guernsey how we can keep our competitive edge in an increasingly hostile world and the one thing we have to improve on is the ability to acknowledge technological change – and cloud computing is one way.’
Article posted on 4th June, 2009 - 2.30pm
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