LAS VEGAS – Cloud is fundamentally disrupting the IT ecosystem but the economics of on-demand solutions is threatening widespread cloud adoption. This was according to participants on a panel about enterprise cloud technologies which took place on Wednesday at Interop Las Vegas.
Experts from Verizon, Oracle, NetApp and Cloudera also said that while enterprises must continue to embrace the cloud and find new ways to bring cloud technologies into IT infrastructure, hybrid solutions will dominate the future as enterprises will always have a need for on premise technologies.
However, consumption and costs of cloud services was highlighted as the challenge to wide-spread adoption of the cloud by enterprises.
“The pay-as-you-go model may not ultimately work for enterprises that are used to predictable technology costs,” said Amr Awadallah, chief technology officer at Cloudera. “One of the biggest challenges CIOs face today is how to manage the books for cloud.”
Joe Rayman, vice president of engineered systems at Oracle agrees saying that figuring out a way to put a contract in place that is beneficial for both provider and user is the “hardest part of the cloud today.” However, he also thinks that the value of cloud outweighs pricing issues.
“CIO’s realize that cloud may not be the cheapest solution today,” said Rayman. “But the agility and flexibility will play out in the future.”
Concerns about the cost structure may slow but it ultimately won’t deter enterprises from embracing cloud. John Considine, Verizon Terremark’s CTO and the moderator of this panel, said that enterprise investments in cloud technologies will have a significant impact on the $3 trillion enterprise IT market.
Hybrid solutions provide the greatest opportunity for cloud.
“On premise isn’t going away,” said Phil Brotherton from NetApp. “There will always be data and applications that companies will want to hold tight, so enterprises and the providers that support them will need to embrace hybrid solutions.”
Forward-thinking enterprises will identify what that core information and those core technologies are, focus their resources and on premise solutions on that and move everything else to the cloud. This multi-tiered application and data model will provide flexibility, scalability and security.
The enterprise cloud ecosystem continues to evolve and there are questions that will need to be answered given the disruption to traditional technology purchasing and management activities. That said, enterprises should embrace the cloud and look for ways to develop multi-tiered cloud and on premises technologies. Hybrid solutions will be the force driving behind the future of enterprise cloud and help answer questions about cloud ROI and on-demand billing.
Editor’s note: Kevin King is filing multiple reports from Interop this week. Read his report on the “Future of Financial Services Data” panel and follow him on Twitter @VerizonKevinK. You may also find live tweets from Interop using the hashtag #VZInterop.
