Some believe that the flexible nature of cloud computing is changing the dynamics of IT outsourcing.

In a new study from the K2 Advisory group, Chief Information Officers, world-wide, are increasingly adopting more flexible labor options.

“In particular [they] favour outcome-based contracts from firms supplying cloud services,” Dr Katy Ring, director of K2 Advisory, said.

“Whilst the theory is good, large scale uptake of these types of contracts is unlikely in the short term due to levels of vendor risk and lack of experience from both procurement and sourcing advisors.”

The study also points out that internal IT departments will still have a role.  It will be their charge to ensure that cloud technologies actually are suited for the needs of their organization.

Nicola Mortimer, head of ICT and business development at O2, recently said that the cloud is changing business dynamics with a greater emphasis on flexibility and mobility.

http://www.k2advisory.com/

Some think so, including GreenPages Technology Solutions CEO Ron Dupler. Monday he was the first speaker at their annual technology summit.  He urged the 100+ CIOs and CTOs that the time is now to seize upon cloud technologies.

“Cloud is here now!” affirmed Dupler in keynote address starting the conference, which has become a summer tradition for information technology (IT) professionals trying to keep their heads above waters in the rapidly changing world of IT.  “It is real. It is happening. And we all need to seize the day and deal with it.”

Dupler said IT officers who did not embrace the cloud would be left behind, and said they were similar to doomsayers of old.

Dupler, for his part, said that IT professionals who dismiss the cloud are  “trying to perpetuate the past” and ultimately are either going to “change their mind” or find themselves “working in new fields.”

The Kittery, Maine-headquartered GreenPages was an early cloud adopter and has been at the front of the cloud computing services paradigm shift advising customers to move to a fully virtualized IT environment in preparation for the cloud computing services era.

Technology research, Gartner, has projected that global cloud computing services revenue will hit $148.8 billion in 2014.

Dupler counseled IT executives attending the summit to look at cloud computing as an “opportunity” instead of a “threat.”

“In the future this is about integrating service platforms,” said Dupler. “It is helping you turn internal IT into a service platform itself and integrating various service platforms.”

http://www.greenpages.com

Dell (NSDQ:Dell) is leveraging its partnership with the Rackspace-led OpenStack open source cloud project to the fullest with the launch of an Infrastructure-as-a-Service system based on the OpenStack cloud operating system.

According to Dell, “OpenStack is a massively scalable infrastructure-as-a-service cloud solution. It offers support for existing ecosystems plus opportunities to influence future direction.”

The Dell Openck Cloud Infrastructure-as-a-Service arrives just as cloud technology has matured enough for customers to want alternatives to proprietary licensed software cloud models.  John Igoe, director of cloud strategy at Dell put it thusly:

“This is one of the first reference architectures in the environment that can be purchased and deployed,” Igoe said of the Dell OpenStack Cloud Solution.

The Dell OpenStack Cloud Solution IaaS play comprises the OpenStack cloud operating system; cloud-optimized Dell PowerEdge C servers; a new Dell-developed OpenStack installer called “Crowbar;” and services from Dell and Rackspace Cloud Builders.

According to Igoe, Dell’s new OpenStack cloud system will not cannibalize existing Dell offerings. Igoe said Dell wants its customers to have different options for moving forward with the cloud.

Kudos to Dell for being a leader in this burgeoning space.

Click here for more information about the new Dell OpenStack-Based Cloud.

Not to be left behind in the cloud buzz, Intel is putting some muscle into promoting its own cloud offerings.  In what Intel is labeling “the world’s smallest data-center”, you essentially have two 1U servers in a nice, compact package.  This is to further bolster their marketing for their “Cloud 2015″ service (wow, so the world doesn’t end in 2012 like the Mayans predicted after all??).

The servers  showcase a number of different Intel products all at once.  The utililize the latest and greatest Xeon processors.  They have support for rigourous hardware encryption via Intel’s “Trusted Execution Technology”.  It also features support for Intels hardware based Virtualization Technology.

Other feautres:

• Intelligent Power Node Manager
• Expressway Access 360
• Expressway Gateway Service

It seems this is effort at a model of many small datacenters distributed geographically, yet operating together.  Let’s see how it plays out.

More information here.

Your business might not be heavily invested in the cloud yet.  It might not even understand what is cloud computing. Today, IDC has predicted that public IT cloud spending will exceed $72.9 billion by 2016, a substantial increase from $21.5 billion just last year.  IDC analyzed five categories when making its prediction:

• Applications
• Application development and deployment
• Systems infrastructure software
• Basic storage and servers
• Software-as-a-service (SaaS), in itself, will account for about three quarters of public IT cloud spending.

“Cloud services are interconnected with and accelerated by other disruptive technologies, including mobile devices, wireless networks, big data analytics, and social networking,” Frank Gens, IDC chief analyst, said in a release. “Together, these technologies are merging into the industry’s third major platform for long-term growth. As during the mainframe and PC eras, the new platform promises to radically expand the users and uses of information technology, leading to a wide and entirely new variety of intelligent industry solutions.”

In layman’s terms, this means that businesses that utilize the cloud can let their employees access data anytime, anywhere, on nearly any device.
IDC is also making some strong statements not just about how much Cloud will grow, but how much it will dominate the overall IT industry:  “With spending for public IT cloud services growing at more than four times the rate of the worldwide IT market as whole, IDC expects one of every seven dollars spent on packaged software, servers, and storage offerings in 2015 will be related to the public cloud model. Moreover, the winners of the cloud platform wars will likely be the new power brokers of the IT industry.”

Have thoughts on the cloud? Prediction for the future? Let us know.