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Microsoft strikes a balance on the cloud

Tony Chan | March 26, 2009 | 0 Comments

By Petroc Wilton, Communications Day

Even as it ploughs massive investment into new data centres, Microsoft is urging the industry to view cloud computing technologies as complementary to traditional premise-based solutions rather than replacing them. Gianpaolo Carraro, DPE director at Microsoft Australia, spoke at a Sydney conference on the need to balance enthusiasm for the cloud with the user benefits of more conventional software and hardware approaches.

The choice of whether to host services on-premise or in the cloud, said Carraro, was closely related to the choice of developing systems in-house or buying them readymade: essentially a question of degrees of control.

“When you want to make a decision about the cloud, you’re making a decision about control versus of economies of scale – the more you embrace the cloud, the more you relinquish control. This is not a bad thing,” he said. But Carraro also pointed out that companies could use a blend of hosted services and on-premise assets for different areas of their business, just as they could mix self-built and off-the-shelf systems.

“As of today, I see a lot of companies wanting to believe the cloud is a solution to everything. The cloud is good, but let’s not believe that everything is cloud,” he said, drawing on a series of examples from voiceprinting to video which required the use of on-premise hardware to deliver the best end-user experience. “Let’s take advantage of what the cloud can offer without forgetting about the other stuff.”

This balance, said Carraro, was driving Microsoft’s ‘software and services’ philosophy. “They are complementary elements; we believe in both,” he said. “We are in the [cloud computing] game, we are building more data centres than anybody else… but we’re also putting a lot of investments in the software side of the house.”

“It’s the right time to look at [the cloud] it’s the right time to look what it means. But not to be completely going wholesale into the new environment.”

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