Outsourcing raises questions for companies

THE renewable energy specialist company Energy Matters kicked off its shift to cloud computing three years ago when it hooked 20 users into online accounting and customer management software from NetSuite.

Energy Matters' general manager for technology Max Sylvester says he wants to put everything he can into the cloud, with the company's PABX his then and there target.

While Sylvester has embraced cloud computing, many IT managers are nevertheless struggling to cut through the hype to determine what cloud computing is and how it could help their business.

They must choose between a range of different service providers offering everything from basic server computing power and storage through to fully hosted applications. They as well have the option of building a private cloud and managing it themselves or handing it to a third party.

Organisations are as well struggling with the issue of what should or shouldn't be moved into the cloud. Consulting company Cloud Solutions Group's managing director Josh Rubens says businesses can start by looking at which applications are critical or non-critical within their business.

Those that are non-critical and don't differentiate a business from its competitors, just as email and document management, human resources and customer management, are good candidates for the cloud. Core business systems, financial systems and graphics-intensive computer-aided design and manufacturing applications may not be.

"And it depends how tightly coupled those applications are with other applications in the business," Rubens says. "Actually what you are looking for are loosely coupled applications, as things now stand a lot easier to pick those applications up and successfully move them out to the cloud and on the whole have the communication going between those applications."

The cruise ship operator Carnival Australia

For the cruise ship operator Carnival Australia, adoption of cloud computing has been driven by business growth: the company has grown from operating one vessel six years ago to welcoming its seventh by the end of straightway year.

Carnival is as well considering moving some of its business processes, including general file management and email and some of its business workflows. Stephens says scalability and the ability to pay by the month are the key attractions of the cloud, along with the ability to support a large number of home-based users among its workforce of 500.

Curtin University, aiming for the best of both worlds, is building a private cloud based on vBlock innovation from Cisco, EMC and VMware for corporate applications and data, during hosting many of its student applications in Microsoft's Azure cloud, including its iPortfolio online learning environment. Curtin's chief information officer Peter Nikoletatos says the creation of an internal private cloud is the first step in a strategy that will in the end see that cloud managed by a third party.

"Some of our telecommunications and our core infrastructure network [will stay on our premises], however pretty much any corporate application and data will migrate to the private cloud or the public cloud. It's a maturity thing," he says.

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TIMES should be good for network systems vendor just as Cisco, as cloud computing takes off and data transport becomes more critical.