Cloud Computing can help Enterprises Save Big

Gordon Graylish Vice President of the Sales and Marketing Group and General Manager of the Enterprise Solution Sales division at Intel remarks business computing has evolved greatly. "The global trends can be studied from three perspectives - the back end - the server, infrastructure, the data center, where the most misused term is 'cloud'." says Graylish.  According to him, cloud is software-as-a-service. "Its ability to provide services on a metered basis allows it to give you that service at a lowered cost"

He agrees that most core applications will take a long time to move to cloud model because of many issues such as governance, privacy, security. "Maybe that's why CIOs are willing to talk about it, but not actually ready to adopt it," believes Graylish.

Graylish elucidates that the positive impact of cloud computing technologies is that they have a much faster rate of deployment of applications coupled with the ability to dynamically change the resources. "From that perspective, the cloud will be about standardizing, optimizing and virtualizing," says Graylish.  In the data center sense, applications can be available without having to budget more resources. "I can increase the utilization of my data center from single digit to 60-70 percent," adds Graylish. " So in some cases, I don't need as much power, or as much space. I have no standard environment so I can graduate to a more virtual machine. This will inevitably be every company's strategy. The question is how I should get to it dynamically."

Less Adoption despite Interest

Despite all talk, the actual adoption of cloud is actually very little. The questions CIOs are asking however, is not "why cloud?" but "which cloud?"

According to Graylish, the problem is that getting to the true cloud, the cloud which promises all the savings, the cloud about which the CEOs have been told, is going to take a little while. "Right now, in a typical data center you have multiple operating systems, applications, different data base. Every new application needs more space. So they are optimized at a project level, and ultimately, to moved to the cloud. You have to stay under-optimized at an enterprise level."  This is where virtualization, he says, can help- it can help getting applications running quickly, lowering the real cost drastically. Optimizing at a project level might lower the cost on that project, but overall the costs will go up. "I would say, this has to be a conscious effort, and that has to be lead by the CIO or the CFO," he adds.

Graylish believes that as IT needs increase, more information will need to be rolled out to more people. The only thing that will not increase is budgets. The CIO needs to have a roadmap laid out - it should specify - here's how we are going to get there, and here's how we are going to reduce power and redundancy costs, using a modern, standard infrastructure with high utilization rates. "The technologies to enable cloud do just that. And this awareness should drive the adoption."

Though desktops virtualization adoption is a fraction of a percent, adoption of server virtualization has probably seen a thousand percent increase in the last year. This is despite the fact that last yea budgets were low and emphasis was on better utilization. The number of companies with strategic plans, have gone up from single digits, to 30- 40 percent globally, says Graylish.

He also feels that there is a bigger need to analyze data and use it better. At Intel, he says, the IT department has moved from being a service provider to the company to being a business enabler. The skills that IT has, are now being applied to business, identifying how customers can benefit more. " So our IT group now has the negotiation of a strategic client, with the organization.   That's about moving IT from a cost center position. That's what most CIOs like to see happen," adds Graylish.

The CIO Role in Innovation

"First of all, we have done a poor job of helping identify the value of IT. It has a cost, but how do we quantify the benefits it generates? That's about knowing the IT capability or maturity framework," Graylish opines.

This will allow the CIO to measure each IT initiative and focus on the ones that are important. "We need to get to a point where we can have a conversation with the CFO where we can describe the value we are delivering. We need to have a framework that allows a conversation with the CXO team," Graylish points out.

Intel's Focus

The other important thing is to grow out of old infrastructure. People invest in a data center, and yet maintain very old infrastructure. "Many people don't realize the impact of going with dated clients," he says. "Out of the 20 million odd clients in enterprise in India, almost a third of them are more than 5 years old. They are used as long as it is running, but they don't realize the energy costs or the security costs, I think that's a huge impact, not to mention the enterprise license." The payback with replacing even a three year old infrastructure with a more modern set, is less than nine months, but not too many people are taking that path despite knowing that it will reduce energy, software, even real estate costs by up to 90 percent.