CIOIN

Despite cloud computing still being in a nascent stage, and many organizations still contemplating whether to take the huge leap forward or not, there are some pioneers who are leading the path. The most interesting thing is that most of these pioneers are not from the IT sector, but from the manufacturing sector. This surprising embrace of cloud technology by a non-IT sector must be a wakeup call for organizations.

CIO Magazine, in collaboration with Alcatel-Lucent, initiated a discussion among CIOs across different verticals to know how they are approaching the cloud and what strategies they are following for the same.

In most quarters, there is increasing impetus from the top management to adopt cloud computing for business operations. But CIOs are weighing the pros and cons associated with adopting the technology and are formulating their strategies accordingly. Vinod Sivarama Krishnan, CIO-Global, Jubilant Food World, shares the same perspective. He said, “The management is very keen on implementing cloud computing, but is concerned if the implementation would aid multiple business operations. Since cloud computing has not yet attained the expected level of maturity, we have decided to take forward our plans slowly and steadily.”

As of now, implementing cloud computing for major business operations is more of a gamble and that is the reason many organizations are hesitant to take that risk. However, one venture that is commonly seen among companies is hosting non-core applications on the cloud. Prashant Veer Singh, CIO, Bharti Infratel Ltd, is willing to take this route. He said that his organization is not yet ready to move core data and applications to the cloud, whereas they are willing to experiment with the non-core counterparts.

It is a well-known fact that virtualization is the first step in the long journey towards cloud. Hence, talks of virtualization are inevitable when it comes to cloud computing strategies. Amarendra Singh, VP-IT & CISO, Comviva Technologies Ltd, emphasized this integral nature of virtualization and how service providers can be more customer-friendly when he said, “Virtualization is the way to go, and when it comes to cloud, service providers have to be more flexible and come up with cost-effective offerings to attract more customers.”

Often, late implementers of cloud technology either follow the path taken by the pioneers or decide to do the implementation the way they want. Fabrice Lieuvin from Alcatel-Lucent suggested a strategy that can be of great help for those who choose the latter way. He advised CIOs to leverage the power of PaaS as the first step towards an all-on-the-cloud infrastructure. He cited an example of how a gaming company in Europe was able to achieve the required benefits by hosting its applications on an external platform. He added that PaaS gives organizations the flexibility of having their in-house applications on a different infrastructure, yet retain access and security to critical data.

Though cloud computing is still developing and is yet to attain the level of maturity required, the technology is here to stay and is for sure bound to revolutionize the way business is done. It would certainly be very interesting to see how the pioneers and the late implementers fare in the end.