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The Smart Techie was renamed Siliconindia India Edition starting Feb 2012 to continue the nearly two decade track record of excellence of our US edition.

May - 2012 - issue > Technology

CLOUD TO SUCCESS

Suhas Kelkar
CTO APAC-BMC Software
Wednesday, May 2, 2012
Suhas Kelkar
The global cloud computing market is expected to grow to $121 billion by 2015, up from $37.8 billion in 2010, according to industry reports. The Asia- Pacific (APAC) region is no exception to this phenomenal growth, as the adoption of cloud computing is driven by businesses looking to respond faster to market needs. Small, medium, and large businesses all are looking to take advantage of the cloud. Governments and public sector organizations in APAC also are very active in adopting cloud computing. There are many examples of government cloud initiatives, such as India’s Unique Identity Number (UID) program and the Australian Government's cloud strategy.

Organizations begin cloud initiatives for many reasons. Yet, whether the goal is to lower costs, automate more functions, or reduce time to deployment, taking on initiatives that are too broad in scope can be tantamount to "boiling the ocean"— so ambitious as to be impractical. While the pressure is on to join the massive rush to the cloud, doing so without thoughtful planning can create problems down the road. The question businesses should be asking isn’t how to transition to the cloud, but rather what are the key factors to consider when deploying a cloud solution.

Most important is for CIOs to begin to understand the value of cloud computing and how it can be used to solve their business needs. We would not tell each CIO we meet to move to the cloud immediately, because that may not meet their unique business needs. Instead, our recommendation is for CIOs to first understand that their business objectives should be driving their cloud strategy, rather than the other way round. It is crucial at this stage to work with the key business leaders whose businesses are going to be impacted directly with the implementation of a cloud strategy.

Although outlining a cloud strategy could be a time-consuming and difficult process, this step is crucial to integrating cloud solutions with existing IT systems. In most cloud scenarios, it is unlikely that everything will move to a cloud model all at once, so even the simplest migrations will require some form of integration.

We've identified three key considerations to guide IT decision makers as they integrate cloud solutions with their existing systems. First, the most effective way for companies to bridge the gap between their existing systems and the cloud solution is to use tools that are specifically designed for cloud integration. For example, BMC's Cloud Lifecycle Management solution provides an administrative portal where IT staff can configure their cloud solution based on unique business needs. This is important as companies tend to reuse older technology or build their own tools rather than using service-provider solutions that are specially designed to integrate both old and new systems.


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