Viewpoint on various cloud offerings and relevance to enterprises

I know I have flooded blog with all this news on Cloud, Private Cloud, Cloud in a box and related hype in the market –

Key questions for synthesis are  – Let’s discuss and get point of view from everyone…

1.   Who or what size of companies will buy or build more than at least two or three such implementations? (e.g. IaaS with Cisco VMDC and PaaS with Microsoft & one more Purpose built based on Enterprise need).

My view: If Revenue size of a company is $1b, Approximate IT spend would be somewhere between 3% to 4% of revenue. Out of this total IT Spend only 30% goes towards Capex (remain is Operational Expenses)  and out of this Capex spend at max 50% would go towards Datacenter needs like Servers, Networks etc.

This would mean close to $4 million would be available yearly to be spent towards DC Cloud building. How wisely to spend this money is question!

2.   If we just build one, will it  ever be able to cater to all enterprise need especially if we are Small or Mid Size Enterprise?

My View:  I think SME should only Set-up IaaS within the enterprise and invest in moving to SaaS solutions. There is no point for SME to get PaaS in the enterprise. SME can always explore PaaS to be built on IaaS created internally or selectively utilize Public cloud or PaaS platforms readily available. Only very Large enterprises must look at PaaS and Purpose built Cloud in a box to be created or bought/built within the enterprise. Consolidating long term IT Infrastructure needs to create Private Cloud based on IaaS is good option for SME.  As an SME($250M-$300M Revenue)  if we have a budgeted  Capex in DC spend of at-least $1M+, Creating a capacity in IaaS would be a good long term solution.  

3.   Isn’t this taking us from multi vendor implementations to back to old days – buy all IT from either IBM, DG or similar OEM. We have to be Microsoft Shop or Oracle Shop or VCE Shop.

My View: This is the most dangerous trend. To get tied to a single vendor or few partnering vendors to get the best efficiency in short term looks good but invariably would have create long term issues in terms of Ability & desire to Innovate, Support Options, Ability to negotiate on costs, Upgrades & End-of-life etc.

4.   What will happen to all this internally  built capacity in each cloud implementations? How does it variablizes IT costs?   Will it not slow down moving to Public Cloud and SaaS?

My View: As these capacity gets built in many such organizations, most IT departments within those enterprise will become entrepreneurs and will try to help businesses by taking it out in the market – e.g. asking enterprises to bundle the services or create managed services whereby they can use this capacity to serve customer, Partners or sell it as service.

Cheers