Cloud choices: public, private, hybrid?

22 Nov 2011

Presentations at IP EXPO aim to help IT professionals place the right bets when it comes to their company’s cloud computing strategy.

The global public cloud services market is on track for ‘explosive’ growth, according to recent research from analyst company Ovum.

Ovum analyst Laurent Lachal has forecast that, over the next five years, sales of public-cloud services will almost quadruple “as uptake soars worldwide”, from £11.4 billion in 2011 to £42 billion by 2016.

Software-as-a-service currently dominates the market, accounting for 87 percent of public cloud services, but Lachal expects this share to drop to 62 percent as infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) and platform-as-a-service (PaaS) offerings gain in popularity.

Whether your company opts for public-cloud services like these, chooses to build its own private cloud, or perhaps adopts a ‘hybrid’ approach that incorporates both models, you’ll find lots of information and guidance at IP EXPO 2011.

If it’s the public cloud approach that your company is pursuing, then Bob Tarzey, analyst and director at IT research company Quocirca, has words of advice on identifying and procuring services in his presentation, ‘Cloud Readiness’.

“Despite the hype, few businesses are in a position to move their IT requirements wholesale to the cloud any time soon. However, this does not mean that there are not benefits to be had from embracing such services,” he says. By sourcing certain enterprise applications and infrastructure resources, provided by third parties, companies can free IT staff from mundane system-support tasks.

He’ll also look at the ‘dark side’ of public cloud services – the threat posed when end-users sidestep IT and start using cloud services they’ve chosen and procured themselves, leading to a dangerous loss of control over corporate data.

The private cloud, meanwhile, is the subject of a presentation by two Symantec employees: Jason Dowzell, the company’s UK information management practice head, and Simon Wallace, its EMEA strategy and technical lead. The title of their presentation, 'Get the Private Cloud You Want, From the Infrastructure You’ve Got’, suggests a thrifty approach that will appeal to cost-conscious attendees with an eye on preserving their employers’ existing IT investments.

Finally, it’s that ‘third way’ – the hybrid cloud – that provides the focus of a presentation by Liam Farrell, senior systems engineer at VMware, ‘Building Your Cloud’. Farrell will guide attendees through the decisions that will need to be made within IT departments that intend to build a private cloud environment of their own that can also make use of public infrastructure offerings.

Charlie Smith, technical consultant at CA Technologies, will be speaking on hybrid cloud infrastructures too. The hybrid on/off premise model, as he will explain in his presentation, is one that he believes will allow companies “to evolve to the cloud at their own pace.”