Cloud Computing Could Cost More, McKinsey Says
15 Avril 2009 - 10:00PM
Dow Jones News
Cloud computing, one of the hottest buzzwords in the technology
industry, currently costs big companies more than some other
alternatives, according to a report from management consultancy
McKinsey.
Cloud computing, a broad term for a variety of technologies that
move computing tasks off companies' servers and onto shared data
centers accessed over the Internet, is a trend many computer and
software vendors are pushing, hoping the trend will help spur the
next wave of post-recession growth. IT research firm Gartner
estimated revenues from cloud services will be worth $150 billion
by 2013.
McKinsey, in a report published Wednesday, said the technology
could eventually deliver significant cost savings by reducing
capital expenditure and enabling customers to use a pay-as-you-go
model for their computing needs. But the firm cautions that
outsourcing all their computing to a cloud service would currently
be a costly mistake for many large corporations.
Using the model of Amazon.com Inc.'s (AMZN) cloud service,
McKinsey said an actual customer, whose identity it didn't
disclose, more than doubled the cost of technology by using a cloud
service, compared with a typical corporate data center.
Hype around cloud computing is creating a "gold rush," McKinsey
said, with companies piling in to offer competing technologies. But
while the model offers significant benefits to smaller companies
and business units within larger companies, the vendors are
currently benefiting more than the customers.
Companies ranging from International Business Machines Corp.
(IBM) to Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) and Google Inc. (GOOG) have all
recently offered products and services geared toward cloud
computing.
Some companies offering cloud services challenged McKinsey's
findings Wednesday. IBM, which is pushing cloud services, said in
an emailed statement that the report failed to consider that most
companies would only use cloud services for a small portion of
their technology needs.
-By Jessica Hodgson, Dow Jones Newswires; 415-439-6455;
jessica.hodgson@dowjones.com