Cloud computing is experiencing a shift in focus, and companies should avoid comparing it to current IT when it is years ahead of the curve, says London School of Economics (LSE) assistant professor Will Venters.
“What some business want from cloud and what cloud is truly offering are different things,” he told journalists at the Cloud World Forum in London today.
Modern firms want economy, simplicity, agility and innovation, as these are the short-term goals they feel they need to meet, yet ignore the scalability and consumerisation that cloud offers.
Cost efficiency, particularly, is a huge driver for the current trend in cloud adoption.
According to a survey of IT professionals at an LSE event, 28 per cent viewed cost as their main reason for looking to the cloud. However, while low costs are a straightforward requirement, “we drastically overestimate the short term benefits compared to the long term,” said Venters.
He pointed to the example of old hard disks that used to hold a mere 10 MB, yet cost more than £3,000. People still bought them in their thousands, because 10 MB was more than enough.
“If you gave an industry professional a 1 TB drive back then, they wouldn’t have known what to do with it,” said Venters. “In the same way, to view the cloud as an equivalent to current IT is short sighted."
