The application of cloud computing in chief information officer's eyes

CIO , chief information officer. CIOs, already familiar with cloud computing, are bragging about the tantalizing prospect of cloud computing, even though the original expected cost savings are not necessarily achievable.

Of course, there are always sober people who give this kind of warning, security issues, reliability and control of corporate data, and other loopholes are found. The definition of cloud computing is the biggest shadow that hangs over all this.

It is astonishing that a recent academic study found that at least 22 definitions of "cloud computing" were widely used, with a very broad concept of using the Internet to access any form of manageable technical services (such as SaaS), and there was also a very optimistic view that diversity, The powerful cloud services portfolio is delivered in real time through securely distributed servers without having to worry about complex deployment issues.

And now the ailing economy is pushing more CIOs to explore cloud computing and its promised cost-saving forecasts, says Doug Tracy, a former global CTO at Rolls-Royce. "However, cloud computing is still a concept that most people don't know for a while." ”

The main attraction of cloud computing is that companies can dispense with the hassle of buying and maintaining hardware, software, and other devices, and directly contract with a cloud service vendor to run their own selected systems or applications on cloud service vendors ' virtual Server infrastructure. These "services" purchased by businesses are obtained in a standardized, multitasking manner, and observers believe that these services can reduce existing costs by 1/3 to 1/2.

This certainly has a good appeal, as the recession is forcing CIOs to find ways to squeeze more efficiency from an IT infrastructure that has been as emaciated as a hungry wolf.

"We are under great pressure to provide flexible and agile services while also cutting costs," said Charles Soto, the IT vice president of Motorola's broadband mobile Solutions business, whose department has tested different cloud services for 4 different applications. But it would be wrong to think that cloud computing would soon bring cost savings, he added.

For Arthur Winn, the BT Group pricing, "cloud" is just a marketing term. The London telecoms company, which has a market capitalisation of $41 billion trillion, has been considering whether to use cloud computing in recent years. Because this will mean that the BT customer call data to a third-party manufacturer to analyze, and then let BT through the Internet to access the analysis results. "As long as we spend less money each year getting more service, why not?" Winn said.

Under the pressure of today's severe economic environment, it is not easy to make a decision on a technology that is overly hype and that is not rich in service types. To remove the cloud of corporate thinking, we need to look carefully at examples of several companies in the industry that are experimenting with cloud computing.

Beyond Hype

CIO The realised that this round of speculation about cloud computing blew it all too well. In the early 90, the hype was client/server computing, and each vendor had to add this gimmick regardless of what they were buying or whether the client/server was suited to its own product. Then the data warehouse, claiming to be able to put all the customers of the enterprise into a single view, a key to fix. Then there is the ERP system, which seeks to replace completely different software systems in different industries.

All these overly hyped technologies ultimately have a significant impact on the computing environment of the enterprise, yet each time, compared to the initial commitment, it creates a greater degree of complexity and high cost.

So will cloud computing be different?

Public cloud or private cloud?

Sybase The CIO of, Jim Swartz, saw the future of cloud computing, but did not intend to cede the company's data to a third party to host it. Instead, he has virtualized Sybase's servers-essentially creating a private cloud of its own-that he believes will better explore ways to use the cloud.

In Sybase, a private cloud of servers in enterprise data centers saves nearly $2 million trillion of operating costs per year since 2006, Swartz said, because the company can share computing power and storage resources across servers. Virtualization also enables Sybase to migrate data from one physical location to another, enabling rapid and agile disaster recovery plans.

For the Norton Medical Center of Kentucky State, a non-profit medical institution in Louisville, the United States, virtualization is certainly saving money, but its CIO Joe Devenuto refuses to cite specific data. Norton Center recently reorganized its data center, adding Emerson's network power and installing 160 virtual servers. The aim is, of course, to exhaust the computing power and storage capabilities of all the devices in the datacenter as much as possible. Virtual servers can be easily scaled up or shrunk, Devenuto says, adding a virtual server will take less time than configuring a traditional server.

Devenuto It may be more efficient to let cloud makers do it than he does, but it is not worth the risk of taking the medical records of 4 hospitals, 10 emergency centers and 60 doctors ' offices in the Norton Center to be managed by the cloud, "he said. In his view, cloud computing is good for disaster recovery, but not for major enterprise computing. "I'm quite conservative," he said. Let me put the patient's information into the public cloud, I really have to struggle. The

Explore using mail services

One institution that is very willing to put the data out is the American Golf Association (USGA), which set rules for the golf tournament, which is held 13 leagues a year. The day-to-day operations of USGA mail systems are very busy because they need to be kept in touch with sponsors, state and territory golf associations, USGA members, clubs and ordinary golf communities. Even a one-hour contact outage could seriously affect its workflow, says Jessica Carroll, USGA's IT Operations manager.

Carroll to modify an existing e-mail backup plan, such a backup would take hours, even days, to do so. By implementing such a plan, the work of the IT department is almost entirely spent on backup. To remove this heavy burden and ensure that the company's data is not lost, she signed an agreement with IBM last year to host a copy of the USGA messaging system at IBM's data center.

If the USGA server is in addition to the problem, Carroll can click a button immediately switch to IBM for her saved mail system copy up, USGA users are not fully aware of such a switch. After that, she leads the IT department to focus on a variety of internal issues.

Hamilton Beach PS companies are also involved in cloud computing through mail services. Last year, when Lotus Motes to the upgrade, the company began to worry. Hamilton Beach has not upgraded notes for three years, and its information services director, Jerry Hodge, until he upgrades from Notes 6.53 to Notes 8, he must also update IBM's I-Series servers and reconnect to more than 500 customers on the system. Just to upgrade your messaging system, you have to do a lot of expensive work.

Hodge the asks his men to look at Google's Gmail service to make an exit. After some speculation, he believes that the company's mail system is not a means of differentiated competition. Monthly subscriptions to Gmail,hamilton beach for each customer eliminates the cost of purchasing new hardware, software licenses, and training. Because Google provides archiving and retrieval services, Hodge can also calculate which projects he can save money on, such as saving backup disks and tapes, and saving it technical support for electronic discovery for litigation or auditing purposes. "In 5 years, we'll be able to save half the cost," Hodge, looking at notes upgrades on spreadsheets and the cost of Gmail. The