“I think there is a lot of uncertainty in what exactly is cloud [computing] — it’s a very broad subject area,” believed Weigelt. When I think about cloud, he added, I think about a pool of computing resources that are available on the network, on demand. In comparison, the U.S. National Insti-
tute of Standards and Technology puts cloud computing into three categories, added O’Higgins:
Infrastructure as a
Service (IaaS); Platform as a Service (PaaS); and Software as a Service (SaaS). “At the low level you rent servers and everything to do with IT,” he explains. “At PaaS you have an application and you rent an infrastructure to turn it out onto the web, and with SaaS you’re renting everything, an application and the business processes. Those are very distinct levels of service that come with cloud environments.” Whatever the chosen level, the es-
teemed panel agreed that the rate of adop- tion for
cloud computing has been
phenomenal. “There’s a lot of talk and discussion, and the hype comes first and the imple- mentation comes second, but it saves money and it’s green, and that’s a double whammy," says O’Higgins.
Small and medium businesses in par- ticular can reap huge benefits, believes Weigelt. “Cloud computing gives them a great opportunity to put their foot in the water to get out there, and use these com- puting services without a big investment in infrastructure in their own environments,” he says. Shiau adds organizational size is a great way of segmenting the market for cloud services. “If you go to the small business side, you have a lot of adoption because of the ability to get infrastructure; you get a reduction in start-up costs for the smallest business. For example, some guy wants to set up a consulting shop and he can go to something like Microsoft Office Live and he can have infrastructure sitting right there,” he says. When it comes to cloud computing, one specific element organizations are looking at, naturally, is the business case to make that leap. What are the benefits? What is the return on investment? All of the round- table panelists agreed that there are two significant advantages to cloud com- puting: flexibility and money savings. In tax time, for example, the govern- ment can easily spin up the extra capacity
John Weigelt is the national tech- nology officer at Microsoft Canada. In this role, he is responsible for driving Microsoft Canada’s strategic policy and technology efforts. He is also the lead public advocate within Microsoft on key issues, such as the development of na- tional technology policy and the use of technology by government, education and the health-care community. He is also a leading advocate on economic development, environmental sustain- ability, accessibility, privacy, critical in- frastructure protection, government 2.0 and interoperability.
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