Tech Trends for 2011: Take to
the Sky
Cloud computing can replace some or all of a company’s physical data storage and software needs with a virtual portfolio of tools and servers.
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E-mailJason Leong vividly recalls the first time cloud computing hovered over his work life. In 2005, as vice president of network operations at the real estate investment trust AMB Property Corp. (AMB), he needed to find a way to connect the company’s San Francisco headquarters with its rapidly expanding satellite offices in Europe and Asia. “The goal was to have very high-speed, high-performance, easily accessed applications to promote rapid growth for our business,” Leong says. It was a daunting task: AMB’s IT operations team was tiny — only around five employees. “The most logical step seemed to be to manage all those server resources through virtualization,” he says, “where you can really consolidate not only your physical hardware but the administration of your servers.”
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AMB says it needed help, so it procured the services of Palo Alto-based cloud solution provider VMware Inc. (VMW), which helped the company build out its virtual infrastructure starting in 2005. AMB has since expanded dramatically. Whereas its head count five years ago numbered about 300 in four countries, it now reports more than 500 employees in 15 countries. Yet its IT department remains around the same size. And while the use of cloud services has certainly reduced AMB’s need for IT professionals, Leong says, his firm’s biggest IT savings have been realized through a reduction in “the amount of time you spend maintaining and troubleshooting physical hardware.”
Welcome to the future of IT management. Gartner Inc. (IT) Senior Vice President of Research Peter Sondergaard defines cloud computing as any Internet-based IT solution that allows companies to provide shared resources, software and information to its employees’ and customers’ computers on a pay-as-you-go basis. In the most extreme cases, cloud services can replace all of a company’s physical data storage and software needs with a virtual portfolio of remotely based tools and servers. But for most companies that use such services right now, the cloud is part of a mixed IT strategy that integrates existing physical infrastructure with an expanding range of storage and productivity solutions that live together in the digital ether. Regardless of how a company employs cloud computing, it is a competitive advantage, says Sondergaard, and companies that ignore this technology do so at their own peril. Next Page
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