Cloudy conditions forecast

Cloud computing is widely touted as the future of computing. Broadly speaking, it refers to the movement of applications and services from an environment where a single company owns and hosts its own application infrastructure to one where these applications are hosted on a shared, Internet-based infrastructure.

Rather than being a pipe dream, this is something that has been in existence for almost as long as the modern Internet. Starting with the introduction of the first Webmail service in 1995, the idea of leveraging the almost universal accessibility of the Internet to access messaging applications remains the most popular application of the cloud computing model.

The consumer market continues to be the largest user of cloud computing services, but it is the enterprise market that remains first prize for companies looking to establish themselves in this market.

There are, however, considerable challenges in making the leap from offering a consumer service to delivering systems to which enterprise customers are willing to entrust the reputation of their business.

The key issues that keep CIOs awake at night when it comes to cloud computing are those around security, privacy, reliability and control. For companies that have spent significant time and effort in building up their infrastructure and implementing policies and systems that restrict when and where and by whom systems can be accessed, the idea of handing over some of that responsibility to a third-party often seems like a very bad one.

The recent compromise of messaging service Twitter, where Google-hosted e-mail accounts were compromised and that information used to gain access to core corporate systems, is just one example of the kind of nightmares that keep CIOs from moving their systems into the cloud.

Companies are seeing demand from their employees for access to the same services that they are used to in their home life.

Eran Feigenbaum, director of security, Google Apps

Eran Feigenbaum, director of security for Google Apps enterprise suite, points out that, by Twitter's own admission, the breach of security at Twitter was not the result of a failure of Google's systems, but rather as a result of the poor security policies on the part of the client. This is something that could happen, irrespective of where the system was being hosted.

Google provides the most well-known example of a cloud-hosted service on the market today. As Feigenbaum points out, the Google Apps enterprise suite is an enterprise strength version of the systems with which consumers are already familiar, from Gmail, Gtalk and Google Docs.

“Companies are seeing demand from their employees for access to the same services that they are used to in their home life in a business context,” he explains. “We already have over 1.75 million customers using the enterprise application suite and are seeing over 3 000 new businesses signing up for the service on a daily basis.”

He could not, however, clarify how many of those 3 000 companies translated into active users and how many were simply signing up to take a closer look at the services on offer.

The challenge that cloud computing faces in the South African market is that even though the amount of international bandwidth coming into the country has increased, the cost of local bandwidth continues to be a key hindrance to local adoption of the technology.

Ermano Quatero, managing executive at Vodacom Business, comments that while the deployment of reasonably decent fibre infrastructure has eliminated bandwidth as a key concern for most corporate users, the lack of cost-effective broadband services does pose problems for small and medium-sized organisations.

“This is a problem that I expect to see resolved in the next 24 months,” Quatero says. “We are seeing a massive move from the SME sector to invest in broadband, and as that happens, we are likely to see more and more companies not only adopting cloud computing services, but also the number of service providers delivering these services is going to escalate dramatically.”

He adds that SMEs are likely to be the fastest adopters of the technology, because of the reduced cost of deploying and running IT services. “Merely the ability to virtually eliminate application support costs will be a key decision-making factor for many companies,” he says.

“In addition to the reduced support costs, the centrally hosted nature of cloud computing applications mean that smaller organisations can benefit from having universal access to their applications,” he comments.

Applications that are most likely to move to the cloud first include collaboration services, such as Cisco's WebEx meeting service, mail services, such as Mimecast and Gmail, with CRM and some aspects of financial software not far behind.

“For many smaller businesses, the looming spectre of e-mail retention legislation makes the concept of cloud computing even more attractive. Because cloud computing service providers are cognisant of the need to maintain proper archiving of all incoming e-mails, these services are set up to cater for these needs. They are also able to offer much larger mailboxes than most companies would allow staff to have. This means staff would no longer be compelled to back up their mail locally,” Quatero comments.

The concept of cloud computing is not one that is restricted to the realm of traditional computing, points out Willie Oosthuizen, CTO at Cisco, emerging central region. He explains that the company is already seeing companies applying it to the distribution of entertainment.

“Increasingly we are going to see pay-TV providers, where there is sufficient bandwidth, choosing to distribute content on demand rather than as per a set schedule,” he says.

“With IPTV it would be possible for consumers to decide what programming they want to watch and have it delivered either to a set schedule or whenever they want to watch it. All that is required would be a set-top box with the capability of streaming video from the relevant service,” he explains.

“With the proper cloud computing infrastructure behind it, these services would then be accessible on any device from any broadband connection,” he adds.

While there are almost endless possibilities for services based on a cloud computing platform, the need for a cost-effective, fast local connection remains the key stumbling block for these services in the South African environment.