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Former Exodus Co-founder Outlines Cloud Computing Realities
By Brian Pereira, NC, October 9, 2009, 1330 hrs
Every now and then there’s a technology that comes along and a lot of hype is created around it. For instance ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode) was widely discussed around 1994. Now it’s Cloud Computing.
In a keynote titled ‘Is Cloud Computing Real?’ B V Jagadeesh, Chairman of the board, Netmagic Solutions sought to separate hype from reality for Cloud Computing. He touched upon the technology and business drivers for Cloud Computing, notably processor, Ethernet and system technology trends. Jagadeesh is better known as the co-founder of Exodus Communications, once a leader in Web co-location services.
 “The technology breakthroughs that have happened in the past four or five years form the foundation for what to expect over the next ten years. Data Centers are going to be revolutionized. But the Data Centers that have been built in the last 10 to 15 years have to take a facelift, not in terms of the critical aspects, but in terms of the way you run your Data Centers, how you deploy and manage servers, and how applications are deployed in these servers,” said Jagadeesh.
With the cost of servers coming down people started deploying Data Centers at a rapid rate. But a large share of Data Center costs is OPEX. As much as 75 percent of the IT budget is used to maintain servers and other infrastructure in the Data Center. So there is little left for research and to bring in efficiencies. This is leading people to think differently about how to run Data Centers.
Jagadeesh alluded to changes in software deliver models, notably SaaS. Organizations want to mange some part of the infrastructure internally and outsource parts of it. IT also became an internal and external service for employees and customers. Capacity planning is one factor that is driving virtualization. He believes all this is driving the increased adoption of Cloud Computing in the enterprise.
“The combination of the private and public cloud can reduce costs, introduce efficiencies and help you monitor unused capacity thereby helping you run your Data Center much more efficiently,” said Jagadesh. “I believe the cloud is for real and public cloud usage will not be limited to SMBs. Eventually the Fortune 500 companies will use the public cloud.”
He pointed out the following Cloud Computing and Data Center trends:
- SMBs are using public clouds
- Technology and solutions are available to build private clouds
- New Data Center architecture will emerge
- There are security, performance and SLA issues to be resolved
“With its expertise in products and software services India has a big opportunity to translate this into producing products, services and solutions for the cloud,” said Jagadeesh.
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