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IT World Canada

Hosted IT infrastructure and applications online can bring benefits, but attendees at this week’s first-ever Canadian Cloud Computing Conference heard more about the challenges for corporations

TORONTO – Data portability, lack of trust and privacy issues are just some of the barriers to wider enterprise adoption of virtually hosted hardware and software, experts told Canada’s first Cloud Computing Conference on Wednesday.

While the hype around cloud computing may have been tempered somewhat by the worldwide recession, one of the bigger challenges may begin among technology professionals themselves, said Reuven Cohen, founder of Toronto-based Enomoly. Part of this comes from a lack of clarity around what cloud computing actually is, he said, but there is also a wariness around putting mission-critical data in a service provider’s hands.

“On the one hand there are these legacy IT department guys who want control,” Cohen said. “On the other hand you have these business units who want more flexibility to be able to rapidly deploy these applications.”

An interesting article, when we say IT though, this can include not only the infrastructure guys, but also the application support and development teams. The issue being more of control and process than anything else, if it’s in-house as an application manager I know I can walk into the CIO and say your infrastructure’s rubbish I want this fixed. As we move to a cloud, or indeed buying in functionality, we ‘loose’ control and concerns of delivery arise. It’s in many ways simpler to virtualization, I understand a physical box that runs my application, it’s my comfort zone, therefore getting me to go on a shared infrastructure a cloud or grid scenario, requires a degree of sales pitch:

• What about the ownership – who owns it – what happens if…?
• How is it billed, and what happens to costs if I want more?
• Who works out capacity?
• What are the rules of engagement – if I need a specific MDAC or oracle client, what happens?

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