Managing the Hype - Cloud Computing

Is traditional IT dead in the world of Cloud computing?

This was an interesting question posed in a conference that I attended over the weekend.  I found the question very intriguing and got me thinking about it.   

Let me start with a confession. Have been a great champion of Cloud based services and strongly believe that Cloud computing holds lot of promise and value.  But the question brings up an very interesting point.  Is the role of traditional IT dead and is cloud computing  the primary way forward.

So let us look at what defines Cloud computing.  I am not going to get into the definition, If you just search on the "Cloud computing definition" on goggle, you would get myriad definitions. But my view is that there is no universally accepted definition on the same. One can find some of the definitions of Cloud computing here.  

But there is a broad consensus on the benefits that Cloud computing can offer:

Caveat: The discussion below primarily focuses on the aspects of Public cloud as many users of Cloud do not intend to set up a Cloud infrastructure internally.   Discussion on the Private and Hybrid cloud mandates a separate discussion and I intend to talk about it in a different post.

a) Elasticity -  Ability to scale both horizontally ( needing more resources as your need increases) and vertically ( needing more powerful resources as your complexity increases) in a seamless manner.  What it essentially implies that cloud computing should provide an easy and seamless mechanism to scale out and scale up resources like computing, storage and memory.

b) Agility -  One of the most significant advantages of using Cloud over traditional IT solutions, is the ability to provision your IT resources changing needs instantly.  Cloud computing promises on demand provisioning and modifications to currently provisioned IT needs. There is no need to plan ahead for upfront commitment.

c) Pay as you use -   One of biggest problem with traditional IT is the issue with respect to idle capacity.  Anyone with some exposure to IT provisioning, would immediately realize that the systems have to be provisioned and designed for peak capacity.  If the application/service that is being offered  is prone to fluctuating load ( For example: a typical e-commerce solution will expect peak load just before holiday season and the difference between peak load average load can be in order of magnitude).  In such situations, the IT capacity is left idling for most of the time.  This is a huge waste on the IT Capex.  Cloud computing with its concept of "Pay for what you use" addresses this issue in a big way.  It allows you to convert the IT Capex into Opex.

Given these advantages, does it imply that Cloud computing is a panacea for all IT related issues.   The overwhelming answer is "NO".   Cloud computing comes with some significant challenges.  Few of the issues w.r.t Cloud computing are:

a) Security and Privacy -   The biggest concern is about the security and privacy of data stored on the cloud.  The jury is out on it as there are serious concerns about storing critical and sensitive data with a third party. The problem gets amplified if the data contain sensitive data with respect to the users of the systems (Example: Credit card data, Health records, etc.) There have been valid concerns about unauthorized access to these sensitive data.

b) Dependencies -  Using cloud services automatically imply that the IT infrastructure is outsourced to the cloud service provider. One of the unfortunate fall out of this is the loss of control.  Over the last few years there have reliability issues with even the best of the providers.  A reliability issue of the service can potentially have a significant impact on the business.

c) Cost of service -  Let us always remember that there are no free lunches in the world.  If you are not in need or not leveraging the significant benefits that Cloud service offers, then probably it would be better to have the inhouse IT infrastructure rather than hosting it on Cloud. Why pay monthly charges if the cost can be incurred once and perpetually used thereafter.

As a practical case, let us look at the IT solution for a Hospital.   The significant attributes of a IT solution for an Hospital can be:

a) The solution is designed for a finite capacity.   The capacity is defined by number of beds that the Hospital and at any point, a hospital will not be serving patients which in excess of its stated capacity.  But there is a requirement to store the past and present patients data.

b) The patient records are sensitive information. It should be ensured that is accessible only to the authorized personnel.  Leaking of this data would imply breach of privacy and Hospital can be liable for prosecution in event of a data leak.

c) The IT solution should be highly available and reliable.  Given the critical service that Hospital provides, its  IT solution ( primarily those which are responsible for regular monitoring, and diagnosis of patients admitted) should be very reliable and should be available.  If there is an issue, there should be a process in place to address and rectify the issue immediately as the cost of unavailability could potentially be life threatening.

Given this, would a solution for the Hospital be hosted on the cloud.  My strong guess would be not.  The requirements essentially does not leverages any advantages that a cloud services offer, but amplifies the disadvantages if there is an issue with the Cloud provider.

In summary,  while Cloud computing is a revolutionary in the way we do business in the IT world, there is no way to conclude that Traditional IT - as it existed few years back is dead.  There are situations and needs which does not require a need for a Cloud service and for such requirements, using  the Cloud is not just necessary but possibly may be wrong.  So we would be seeing Traditional IT co inhabiting   with Cloud computing for quite some time to come.