Cloud computing roots: CIO Cloud Investment needs to be cautious

Some say 2011 is the year of cloud computing. Because this year cloud industry's big event, emerges the personage, the product is especially many; this year, many it giants gathered energy to speed up acquisitions; more IT executives announced a move to cloud computing in the year; more cloud cases are taking root in the country this year. More cloud apps are on the smart terminals and tablet computers ...

The IDC report says: In the 2012, in the corporate sector, big companies are redistributing budgets, and new PCs are no longer a priority option, as it plans to move investments to cloud services. Can be seen in the 2012, for cloud computing, whether from the manufacturer's publicity, or the user's awareness has been greatly improved, the strength of large enterprises have put forward their own cloud plans to increase cloud investment, upgrade business processing capacity.

However, in the face of different functions of cloud products, CIOs How to choose to achieve the optimal cloud input-output ratio, rather than blindly pursuit of new technology? Because the concept of cloud computing is more about turning it into a business-oriented capability than simply reducing it costs. No matter how important "soft cost" is in the enterprise context, it does not mean that cloud computing does not require financial assessment, after all, the types of projects that are specific to each cloud are different.

Reducing costs is the biggest driver of the CIO's attempt at cloud computing. 28% of CIOs said the drive to cloud computing was the first to reduce the cost of the environment and equipment. followed by the provision of system flexibility and reliability, reduce staff costs and management difficulties, respectively accounted for 27% and 23%. Miaokai, Intel China's chief engineer, believes that efficient it resource utilization in the cloud service model can lead to significant it cost savings for the enterprise.

By communicating with the CIO, the reporter found that a lot of corporate CIOs have two concerns about investing in the public cloud: 1. While capital expenditure can now be reduced, it is likely to face higher operating costs in the future; 2. According to the nature of the enterprise itself, the security of the core data is not guaranteed. Based on this, more large enterprise CIOs tend to choose to invest their money in the construction of their own private cloud.

"Compared to the public cloud, large enterprises deploy private or mixed clouds, and their overall architecture is closer to the traditional enterprise internal IT architecture," said Pan, president of the Red Hat Greater China region. Users only need to buy software (sometimes they may need to buy hardware), plan and execute operations, train IT staff and business people, all of which are combined in the context of an IT environment and architecture, can save costs, make the business work better, and increase the value of cloud investment. ”

So how should cios scientifically and reasonably make cloud investments bring the ideal value? Beijing Zhongyuan Real Estate Information Technology department general manager Wangyu said: "The ultimate goal of cloud computing for enterprise applications is to achieve flexible, free allocation and use of resources, so as to achieve cost savings, improve the value of application, we have been concerned about this." ”

"Corporate users are looking for low-cost," says Pan. High-benefit cloud investment, the Red Hat Cloud computing solution caters well to the needs of enterprise users, providing customers with a highly attractive cloud computing solution built on open source technology that delivers exceptional performance, scalability, security, manageability, and low cost. ”

Cloud computing has grown so well today that every vendor is trumpeting its cloud-computing strategies and products. But many manufacturers are blocking cloud computing, requiring users to use their own products and supplies, so that customers become relatively passive, and it's not hard to see that the traditional business model of buying licenses is already outdated. Open source manufacturers Red Hat has always been the way to buy their own products, "subscription mode" is what they have been advocating, but also their successful experience accumulated over the years. For the Red Hat, they do not have the concept of "license", which eliminates the question of the cost of purchasing a license, and does not need to consider the issue of buying more licenses and buying less.

As you can see, as an upgrade and complement to the traditional IT platform, the open source cloud computing platform has matured among enterprise users and has gradually started to commercialize the technology. Therefore, CIOs want to do a successful cloud investment, choose their own enterprise appropriate cloud products, so that investment to produce the best effect, really want to do some kung fu. Not only must have the scientific quantification basis, but also has the sharp reasonable decision-making power. After all, make any investment, there is a corresponding reasonable return is kingly.

(Responsible editor: Lu Guang)