To cloud or not to cloud? IT leaders compare digital strategies

CIOs at a recent IT Leaders Forum event discuss their uses of the different flavours of cloud

If you're starting a new business today, the chances are that you would host all of your data and applications in the cloud, and have little or no IT infrastructure. That strategy does away with capital expenditure, and enables rapid growth, should it be needed.

Many larger, existing business are going that way too, binning infrastructure and moving wholesale into the cloud. But not all.

There was a split in cloud strategies at a recent Computing IT Leaders Forum event, with some IT leaders advocating a cloud-first, cloud-only strategy, and others stating that they are keeping well out.

One of the cloud proponents was Nick Ioannou, Head of IT at Ratcliffe Groves Partnership.

"We're 80 per cent in the cloud," said Ioannou. "We store files locally, then backup to the cloud. We're about to refresh servers and storage because Server 2016 been released. We're now looking at hybrid systems and other options, and whatever we use we'll need for the next three years."

Ioannou added that his business, a firm of architects, creates a lot of data.

"We create a lot of data. Every time we go on a construction site we take lots of photos. Also, our data is changing constantly."

He explained that every time an architect makes any kind of change on a plan they're designing, the software automatically saves it as a new version. That also happens for every single mouse click. That ends up being a large volume of data.

"One of the issues I have to address is versioning. The architects will accidentally trash a file and they won't notice until four or five generations on. Then they need us to go back x number of versions, so I have to backup to cloud because I know it works.

"The bulk of my recovery is the users accidentally saving when they meant to hit 'save as'. And it can go back a year sometimes. Our projects last two to five years, and they can come back to life 20 years later because someone wants to expand the retail park we designed because they've bought the land next door. It's a real challenge, but the cloud lets me do that."

Earlier at the event, the panellists had complained that data volumes have outgrown the capacity of networks to move it around the world at an acceptable rate.

On the other side of the argument was Phil Durbin, Head of IT Systems at the Salvation Army.

"We're completely on-premise using our own infrastructure, we don't use cloud," began Durbin. "Our storage needs are doubling every four years. We're finding we need to store lots of unsructured data, lots of video, audio, and pictures, and that will only increase."

A further problem for Durbin is the need to store data indefinitely.

"We keep our data forever. I often say to people we are the mountain in [backup vendor] Iron Mountain. All tapes are used once and never again, unless we need to read them later. That creates lots of issues, and we're looking at that data retention model. So we're looking at a doubling of our data in the next few years, and I'm looking to see how we can do it," said Durbin.

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To cloud or not to cloud? IT leaders compare digital strategies

CIOs at a recent IT Leaders Forum event discuss their uses of the different flavours of cloud

Lukas Oberhuber, CTO at Simply Business, explained that he is trying to push his firm to be entirely in the cloud.

"I've been looking at our data needs for the next five years. I know we'll need to cope with far more than we do today. "I've been doing website analysis, and we have insurance documents, quotes customers have given us, and it all takes up space. And it's complicated and lumpy, not just lots of simple, small files.

"We're seeing data expanding rapdily. We're pushing hard to be entirely in the cloud. All of our storage needs are in the cloud already, like S3 storage buckets [from Amazon Web Services]. That works well for us because I don't have to spend lots of time thinking about buying more storage."

Oberhuber added that whilst his storage needs are well-served, it's the systems built on top of the storage platform, and the way in which they manage data that's more important. However, there are still unknowns.

"Because of the way we're innovating around insurance technology and using the web, I don't know where it's going to go next. Our storage needs are doubling every year or two, maybe even quicker."

Alex Chen, director at IBM explained that whether firms decide the cloud is or isn't right for them, the important thing is to understand its potential, and to have a strategy.

"Almost everyone I've talked to in last year or two is starting to see a coroprate mandate that they need to have a cloud strategy. You have to at least evalute it. As they look into this space, they need to see if the economic equation makes sense.

"Most of time hybrid cloud is the answer. Bursty workloads can be put into the cloud environment, steady ones can be owned on-premise. We're seeing most clients adopting hybrid. There are lots of applications starting on mobile devices, and they're built for cloud, so that's about object not block storage. Some of them are even built natively on the cloud to begin with."

However Durbin was still certain the cloud is not the strategy for the Salvation Army, at least for the time being.

"I don't see us putting data in cloud for the foreseeable future because I want to keep control and maintain responsiblity for secuity both in transit and at rest," said Durbin. "I want a technology that enlables half a person to look after petabytes of data as their job. Although we're a charity, I feel the technology has got to a point where you can manage, control and monitor data very straightforwardly with very small teams of people," he said.