Don't go cloud to save money, says HP

It's become an old saw now that security is the biggest hurdle to cloud adoption. I've contributed my voice to this on this blog, explaining why I think the cloud isn't ready for the big time yet. But the times they are a-changing.

There's no reason why a company shouldn't push many of its functions out to the cloud -- I seem to recall that we called it outsourcing back in the day -- and many of course are doing just that. Such functions include HR and accounts -- not generally viewed as core functions -- and whether IT falls into this bucket is a matter of some contention...

Vendors of course take a bullish view of these things: there's a lot of tin to be sold into the cloud, after all. Real-world users are naturally more than a bit cautious about betting their businesses on new models, but concede that there could be considerable advantages, and the most often-cited of these is cost savings.

So it was interesting to hear HP say at a conference last week that enterprises should not go into the cloud in order to save money but instead focus on the flexibility and agility aspects that cloud promises.

Steve Dietch, VP of HP's Cloud infrastructure division, said at NetEvents in Langkawi, Malaysia that enterprises should take it slow and steady, one step at a time. "Everyone wants to talk about cloud but what about security, performance, and management?," he said.

Dietch, who was giving a keynote speech in front of press and analysts, told the audience that people will evolve to cloud at their own speed depending on the business case. He also acknowledged that things aren't moving that quickly in the real world. Enterprises are in effect starting at the top and moving down the stack, with software as a service being taken up first, while infrastructure as a service takes longer.

The result will be hybrid cloud models -- part public, part private -- for some time to come, Dietch said. "It will take a long time and it'll happen in a pragmatic, stepwise approach. It's a secular trend. The problems I've seen too often -- ten times in the last three months -- is companies too quickly move infrastructure into the cloud without time to improve its credibility, he said.

"So my advice is to carve off something such as development and testing, do it fast and then move forward. One message: if you're going to screw it up, screw it up fast so you have time to recover the situation."

Sounds like reasonable advice. But as ever, industry analysts warn that you need to check the small print very carefully before committing to fundamental shifts: make sure your data will be safe and that you can get it back.

There's an interesting examination of this and other related issues by Bernard Golden, who is CEO of consulting firm HyperStratus, here.