Chief information officers (CIO) today must make the right choice among private clouds, public clouds and traditional IT to maximise benefits, minimise risk and propel business.

Cloud services have emerged as viable options, thanks to the cost savings, flexibility and fast delivery for providing agile IT services.

Traditional IT services are still important, especially as security and availability concerns inhibit widespread cloud adoption. By utilising cloud services, enterprises can look ahead to anticipate customer needs and predict business trends without having to worry about the IT infrastructure, platforms and applications that might be required to support them.

In this hybrid world of IT delivery choices, where public cloud and private cloud are becoming viable options along with traditional IT services, the onus is now on IT leaders to determine which of their current and future technology projects would benefit most from which model.

We see a world of hybrid computing, not a one-size-fits-all world. Public clouds are good for some things, while private clouds are good for others, as are traditional IT investments. What’s important is to determine the best service method for each IT or business need.

There is no doubt that as cloud computing services mature, IT departments are placing a growing reliance on them. According to the 2010 CIO Cloud Computing Survey published in November 2012, which asked 451 IT decision makers how cloud computing is influencing their businesses, an average of 18 per cent of respondents’ IT budgets are allocated to cloud services.

Enterprise survey respondents planned to invest on average $2.2 million in cloud-based solutions and services during the ensuing 12 months, reflecting the sentiment that cloud offers compelling business advantages, according to the survey report.

An average of 18 per cent of respondents’ IT budgets are allocated to cloud services

Among the benefits cloud computing promises are cost savings, flexibility and speed to market. However, as deployments evolve, many organisations are finding that what was initially considered the best cloud benefit – reduced cost – has taken a back seat to the advantages offered by the model’s flexibility.

There is a time-to-market value with cloud that increases competitiveness and responsiveness to business. That’s the reason why cloud is front and centre in CIOs minds. It is not just about cost, agility and speed.

While choice is good, the additional delivery options that private and public cloud represent add complexity to the equation and place additional pressure on CIOs to make the right decisions regarding service delivery.

In order to make the right choice, CIOs should first consider the scope and nature of the application.

Ask yourself, how strategic is the application? How much performance, security and availability is required? Those answers dictate whether the application or service should be on an external or private cloud, or maybe the application does not belong in the cloud, so you deliver it via traditional services.

While hybrid IT delivery models offer the flexibility, agility and mix of service types to allow CIOs to keep up with changes in business and user demands, what is required to make the most of a hybrid environment is a unified management approach.

Application and system management tools are evolving so that IT services, be they cloud-based or traditional, can subscribe to a common management layer and offer a unified view of an organisation’s services portfolio.

Pre-defined, fully automated workflows help speed and simplify service delivery, allowing self-service and automation technology to be applied. With these tools, users can get for themselves the services they need, quickly provisioning IT assets by accessing a self-service portal to build, manage and monitor services.

Such tools offer the best of both worlds; users get the speed of de­ployment and flexibility they need, and IT departments maintain control over their technology environment.

Cloud computing has not yet hit mainstream adoption, but few doubt that the model will gain widespread popularity as more and more successful deployments are championed. Requests from users for cloud services will undoubtedly grow.

Beattrix Mueller-Meszarich is managing director Country Developer Group at HP, which includes Malta.

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.