David Ayers, Senior Product Manager for SunGard Availability Services, provides insights today on the evolving role of the data center and cloud computing. –CM
Corporate data centers are definitely changing how they are used, but co-location and managed hosting have done that for some time. Now, cloud computing will be one more tool a company has at its disposal to manage their technology. So, will cloud computing replace in-house data centers? Not for the foreseeable future.
Currently, corporations are shifting to the cloud the applications that make sense, while retaining the applications that manage sensitive data, that operate smoothly with little oversight or that make financial sense for one reason or another. Applications that require a more scalable, more elastic environment will move to the cloud, along with those that run infrequently but require capital expenditures to support.
Over time, corporations may move more applications to the cloud as their comfort level increases and as usage patterns change. In addition, they are more likely to build new applications for the cloud to reduce capital expenditures from the beginning.
The role of the in-house data center will not diminish in importance. Instead, it will focus more on evaluating the optimal environment for the company. With someone else worrying about capacity planning, bandwidth, firewalls, licenses and managing a cadre of vendors, the in-house data center can focus more on the next generation of business applications.
In the end, a cloud operates at a fraction of the cost of an in-house data center and it draws in applications that can benefit from those savings. In-house data centers will use them as tools, where they can oversee the work rather than actually do the work.
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