CeBIT: Cloud will not replace on-premise storage

HANOVER: Cloud computing is unlikely to displace on-premise deployments anytime soon owing to ongoing regulatory and security concerns, according to leading vendors speaking at the Cloud Computing summit at CeBIT.

Executives from IBM, Fujitsu, Intel and Google agreed that, while cloud computing is an evolutionary technology, hardware is key to maximising its benefits.

Andre Kiehne, vice president of services at Fujitsu Technology Solutions, was adamant that companies and individuals will never be able to store 100 per cent of their information in the cloud, and that technical and regulatory hurdles need to be overcome if the technology is to be a success.

Sébastien Marotte, EMEA vice president of enterprise at Google, acknowledged that it is not appropriate to put all data in the cloud, but qualified this by saying that businesses need to embrace the technology's advantages.

"We cannot put everything on the public cloud right now, [but] my advice is anything that you can put on the cloud, just put it, because the benefits, whether you are in the IT department or an end user, are dramatic compared to on-premise solutions," he said.

"The benefits are in terms of evolution, scalability, maintenance, user benefits and accessibility."

The need for improved hardware to support cloud infrastructures was highlighted by Christian Morales, vice president and general manager at Intel.

"Ten years ago we had 50 million transistors in a microprocessor, whether it was in a desktop or a notebook. Now we are talking about 1.2 to 1.5 billion transistors in a desktop," he said.

"We are going to see three billion in the future, because people want a better interface when they work with their devices. They want to have applications that work faster and have [faster] communication."

Some 15 billion devices will be connected to the internet by 2015, according to Morales, and security is an important issue that needs to be addressed.

"[Data protection] is top of the list, and there is a lot of work that needs to be done. We are always on the verge of having security issues, and we have to invest more [in this area]," he said.

Other key issues include the need for more bandwidth, tighter security and open standards, according to Morales, while more new-generation datacentres and better devices will be also be required.

The importance of analytics will also increase as the number of connected devices rises, otherwise bandwidth will be overloaded by all the raw information, according to Michael Diemer, chief executive of IBM Germany.