[LINK] Cloud Computing Services in Australia?

[stephen at melbpc.org.au]

> Bernard Robertson-Dunn writes:
>
> > In other words, the cloud providers are saying: change your
> > application architecture to suit our product/solution/service
> > and you can use our product/solution/service. This means that moving 
> > existing applications to a cloud environment is not a simple case of
> > moving files. It's a complex re-write.
> 
> Roger writes,
>
> It's a blatant lock-in mechanism. Unfortunately, many organisations are
> so bereft of internal IT expertise (not to mention common sense), and
> so incapable of doing  whole-of-life costing (or even looking beyond
> the salesman in front of them), that some organisations will actually
> buy these offers.


Rightly or wrongly, many organizations ARE buying them apparently. And
if I was a company shareholder I would be wanting to know why not. But,
I say again imho we should be (and are) creating cloud infrastructures,
if not yet using clouds, at a very very rapid rate indeed ..

1. "Mudaliar says cloud services revenues in Australia are forecast to 
increase from $470.3 million last year to $2.03 billion by 2015. This 
represents a compound annual growth rate of 34 per cent.

Although some organisations were reluctant to embrace cloud computing 
offerings when the trend first emerged, one of the biggest roadblocks 
appears to be crumbling. Analysts say early discussions were focused on 
the security of cloud providers, as customers doubted that applications 
and data could be as well guarded as they would be sitting on in-house 
systems.

Ovum research director Kevin Noonan says although security is obviously 
critical, it's important to keep a perspective of the actual risks 
involved. 

"There is far more (media) coverage of outages with existing equipment 
than cloud," he says.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/australian-it/cloud-computing/benefits-of-
the-cloud-are-getting-through/story-fn8lu7wm-1226169011531


2. Westpac's private cloud .. was expected to provide significant savings 
on infrastructure costs alone. "The private cloud is cheaper and we don't 
have to pay upfront capital," Mr Girn said in an interview. "It is 
probably 30 to 40 per cent cheaper than installing our own dedicated 
infrastructure." Westpac plans to spend $2 billion over five years on key 
IT initiatives. It has a five-year, $1.3bn master contract with IBM for 
IT outsourcing, which covers the Microsoft-Fujitsu private cloud deal.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/australian-it/cloud-computing/westpac-to-
save-with-own-private-cloud/story-fn8lu7wm-1226106220678

3. When Bankstown City Credit Union needed to refresh its hosted IT 
infrastructure, the proposed upgrade was too costly and didn't take 
advantage of emerging technologies. The institution also has remote 
workers, such as mobile lenders, who had difficulty connecting to the 
office. After searching the market in 2009, the credit union, which has 
almost 30 staff, selected Brennan IT's private-cloud platform. "There is 
a lot of negativity in the marketplace about cloud technology, but moving 
to a private cloud is nothing new," Huseyin says. "Even though we are 
sharing the virtualised servers, we are not sharing data with anyone."
Combining the private-cloud infrastructure with Brennan's data, voice and 
IT support services, the system provides an integrated "one-stop" shop 
approach. He says performance and reliability have noticeably improved 
since the move to Brennan early last year. "Previously, we had a lot of 
dropouts with lines and we could never work out what the problem was 
after months of investigations," Huseyin says. From internet banking to 
mobile and telephone banking services, the cloud delivers the financial 
institution's consumer-facing banking and financial application needs.
Huseyin says the pay-for-use model means that the credit union's capex 
has dropped dramatically. The scalability of the cloud means it can 
increase capacity quickly and consistently size its infrastructure to 
demands. "So we know exactly per employee what the cost will be when we 
put someone on and take someone off," Huseyin said. "The Brennan IT 
private-cloud platform had resulted in thousands of dollars in savings."

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/australian-it/productivity-on-cloud-
boosted-for-bankstown-city-credi-union/story-e6frgakx-1226124711670

1.(continued)  According to Gartner research, the global market for 
public cloud services was worth $US74.3 billion last year.By 2015, the 
figure is forecast to be $176.8 billion, representing a five-year 
compound annual growth rate of 18.9 per cent. While such figures are eye-
catching, analysts point out that the total market comprises several sub-
markets. These include offerings such as Software-as-a-Service, Platform-
as-a-Service and Infrastructure-as-a-Service. Mudaliar says cloud 
services revenues in Australia are forecast to increase from $470.3 
million last year to $2.03 billion by 2015. This represents a compound 
annual growth rate of 34 per cent. Although some organisations were 
reluctant to embrace cloud computing offerings when the trend first 
emerged, one of the biggest roadblocks appears to be crumbling. Analysts 
say early discussions were focused on the security of cloud providers, as 
customers doubted that applications and data could be as well guarded as 
they would be sitting on in-house systems. Ovum research director Kevin 
Noonan says although security is obviously critical, it's important to 
keep a perspective of the actual risks involved. "There is far more 
(media) coverage of outages with existing equipment than cloud," he says.

--

Cheers,
Stephen