Different models of cloud must co-exist

BANGALORE, INDIA: While both private and public clouds are well established, hybrid cloud is yet to gain prominence, consensus panelists at a session, on 'Breaking the Myth of Hybrid Cloud, at the 'Cloud and Mobility Summit 2012' organised by NASSCOM RIM Forum Initiative here on Wednesday.

The session put forth the scenario of the cloud deployment in India. It also pointed out that different models of cloud architecture need to co-exist.

The panelists also noted that cloud technology has been over-hyped all this while, and now it is the time to show its importance and worth. Media, government, manufacturing and banking sectors are the leaders in the adoption of cloud technology in India. SMBs are aggressive in the adoption of public cloud due to the go-to-market, cost and readiness perspective.

In the session, Kiran Desai, VP & Business Head, Managed Services Business, Global Infrastructure Services (GIS), Wipro Infotech, said, "Hybrid cloud is not a reality today. There is a dire need for standardization. A few enterprises have gone for hybrid cloud without setting up private clouds." He further added that both SMBs and large enterprises have tremendous interest on hybrid cloud, but they lack clarity on how it needs to be implemented.

Panelist Suhas A. Kelkar, CTO (APAC), senior director (Incubator Team), BMC Software mentioned that hybrid cloud is adopted both as a top-down initiative and also at grass-root level.

He said, "When companies use public clouds as it is cost-effective, many of the IT policies and plans go out of the window. Thus, CIOs come under tremendous pressure, who then try to bring it back under the IT policy. This is how the hybrid cloud took its shape as a top-down imitative and in most cases it has also started at grass roots."

According to Giridhar L V, head — vmUnify, MindTree, enterprises should invest in virtualized servers and not exactly in cloud. For cloud adoption, enterprises should plan according to the capacity and utilization. He cited an instance of Zynga, which went for a reverse model. Zynga had adopted public cloud to offer gaming initially and later it shifted to private cloud.