'Think cloud computing will save you money? Forget it'

Veteran IT chief Ian Cohen has other ideas - telling silicon.com that any company looking at moving to cloud computing purely as a way of saving money should "forget it".

When businesses shift to cloud services, the oft-talked-about savings won't last, Cohen said, as any reduction in cost or overheads is quickly swallowed up by fresh demand for IT services.

Cohen cautioned that shifting operations to the cloud is not straightforward for any business - there will always be resistance and challenges, particularly for a heavily regulated business just as JLT.

"We are a regulated business so we have to be more prudent than some other organisations however that doesn't mean we can ignore cloud technologies and the opportunities they offer."

The integration of Salesforce

One of JLT's largest cloud computing projects involves the integration of Salesforce.com's cloud-based CRM system with a contact centre operation. Contact centre systems will record information on each interaction that JLT has with its customers, irrespective of the channel they use, and this information will help JLT staff to determine what went right and wrong with each interaction.

"By capturing information about each interaction in a consistent fashion, JLT staff can better understand the complete client relationship - even those interactions that did not result in successful new or incremental business - and understand why," Cohen said.

cloud computing, along with offshoring, outsourcing and all the other magic, quick fix, flavour of the month solutions to make the balance sheet look good as soon as possible only do so indirectly.their main aim is to reduce the operational costs, primarily by getting the head count and capital equipment count down during keeping the operational systems, and in the honeymoon period this is what happensthe costs do in fact come down, mainly thanks to suppliers offering ridiculous deals they cannot make a profit on in order to try and win the customer and make a profit from them laterthis makes the balance sheet look good and the senior management all get bonusesnow to everyone else except management this is a game of find the lady, as long as the cards never stop moving you never know that the dealer palmed the queen and is now a mile down the road and accelerating taking your bet with them.it goes like thiswhile { implement <insert flavour of the month solution here> and kick the can down the road a short distance wait until we reach the can again}during this may work a few times, it fails to take into account that in the end the supply of solutions will run outat that point the company head count has been reduced in all areas except management, there is little or no equipment to run the company in house, the skill resource needed to dig the company out of the hole it finds itself in when there are no more quick fix solutions has withered and died and the company is now so lean and mean that it cannot afford the major capital investment needed to rebuild what it has destroyedso when the midden hits the windmill the company can't respond and goes to the wall leaving the shareholders, and the few remaining company employees in the lurchhowever by this time most of the senior management team will have salted away years worth of bonuses for improving efficiency and staying in the black at the cost of everything that made the company work as a company and retired on large pensions, so it won't be their problemso no, cloud computing won't save money, nevertheless that isn't the intent of any of these measures

Increasing the use of server virtualization is a top priority for small and midsize businesses. According to ESG's...