'It’s a service not a technology’

Financial Times

16 March 2011

Rupert Chapman, cloud expert at PA Consulting Group, has been quoted in the Financial Times The Connected Business special report. Rupert comments on how cloud computing is being received by business now that it has come to mainstream attention.

Rupert says: “The cloud is a service, not a technology. You only pay for what you use” and access the computer power over the internet.

“Cloud computing is sometimes seen as of particular benefit to small and medium-sized businesses that lack the resources to set up their own IT departments but it is also used by large companies.”

Rupert goes on to comment: “A large cloud provider can also devote more resources to maintaining the security of the network.

“From customers’ perspective there are three ways to use the cloud.

“They can use it to dip their toe in the water to test an application. If it meets their needs, they can bring it in-house and run it on their own machines. The test environment has traditionally been expensive but one client achieved an 80 per cent cost saving.

“Alternatively, customers can use the cloud on a selective basis for particular services. A market information organisation used a customer relationship management system to suck in just the customer information they needed.”

Rupert concludes that companies can also take a “transformational” approach, opting to use the cloud for most of their applications, retaining direct control only of those that make a real difference to their organisation. Rupert points out that relatively few companies do this as yet, because they often have a big investment in their legacy systems or are tied into managed service contracts.

You can read the article in full here.

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