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What Every CIO Should Know About Cloud Computing

A Discussion with James Barrese, CTO, PayPal; Winston Damarillo, Co-Founder and CEO, Morphlabs; David Nelson, Chief Strategist, Cloud Computing, Boeing; Allwyn Sequeira, VP/CTO, Security and Networking in the Cloud Infrastructure BU, VMware; and Don Pickering, CEO, OneOcean; hosted by Greg Ness, Chief Marketing Officer, Vantage Data Centers

GN: Why are enterprises interested in cloud computing?

JB: Once someone starts using superior tech, they won’t go back. For developers this means capacity on demand.

DN: Frictionless IT; you can get resources on demand and have apps drive IT rather than the other way around.

WD: Introduced new processes into enterprise that shorten the software development cycle.

JB: At the end of the day, if you have a big enough footprint and are using it constantly, it makes sense to own cloud. Whereas if you’re dealing with spikes, it makes sense to have on-demand. Therefore an integrated model makes the most sense.

WD: Private cloud is cheaper than public cloud. If you write your code and infrastructure to bridge back to public cloud from private cloud, that’s nirvana.

PT: Energy is the largest variable cost once you flip to private. Most enterprises aren’t there yet.

GN: If you’re using assets day in and day out, it’s cheaper to have a private cloud.

PT: There’s progress in security. Inhibitors for adoption: Notion of security, regulatory compliance. Cloud is about specialization. In the long run,  services should be cheaper. There’s opportunity to be better at securing public clouds.

WD: You control your own design. You have an idea of what your infrastructure should look like. From that base you can engage externalized resources. The CIO should do this.

GN: Public cloud, what impact will it have?

DP: Objective security problems v. perceived security issues. Military won’t want to touch public for a long time. Organizing and managing GIS data: You’ll see specialization of clouds and cloud services based on individuals. As we develop tools and technologies, you’ll see specialization across verticals.

PT: We’re already seeing that with healthcare, stock exchange, aviation industry.

GN: Will big companies like Oracle be the leaders in this?

WD: The open source community is bringing a huge amount of work to the table. Supports huge amounts of hardware and software we bring to it. OpenStack is a good model. Standards will take a long time.

PT: One of challenging things for CIO, in long-term cloud opportunity is in software as a service and infrastructure as a service. Cloud provides global access to IT from which to build businesses. Platforms are where you’re able to leverage. It’s about creating a virtual cycle that drives innovation.

GN: Will infrastructure as a service give way to mobile as service?

PT: You have to revaluate your processes. Then you can turn to private clouds.

WD: Infrastructure is about to get extremely exciting. Storage, iOps, are the really exciting thing now. Imagine putting iOps in every computer. It will change how we write and run apps.

Processed automation.

JB: You’ll have more devices, which is forcing developers to figure out how to connect them all, which requires a cloud.

Standardization: companies are putting billions of dollars into developing clouds.

PT: Sensors everywhere will create vast amounts of data, that will become real-time streaming analytics platform. Building blocks for this are not the blocks we’ve been using in traditional data centers. CIO probably doesn’t want to care about it.