Insurance firm Kennedys and Rowanmoor Pensions are
using
cloud computing services to beat the credit crunch.
Kennedys is using the cloud computing model of online services
to virtualise its IT operations. Itclaims to be saving more than
£350,000 a year.
According to Rowanmoor Pensions, a similar cloud computing model
is saving the organisation about £200,000 a year.
By providing applications, storage and computing power online,
cloud computing enables firms to buy IT services as and when
required without incurring long-term hardware and software
maintenance costs.
Other cost savings come from reduced hardware requirements, no
capital expenditure on software, and lower power consumption.
Ian Readman, chief executive of IT services firm
Intercept IT, said cloud computing should be considered as a
way of driving down IT costs while improving reliability and user
experience.
"For larger firms this approach can be used to centralise,
virtualise and optimise their own corporate datacentres, or SMEs
may look to outsource their complete IT to a specialist virtual IT
provider," he said.
According to Readman, cloud computing is particularly well
suited to companies with sales teams working remotely and needing
to access company information online.
"This has huge potential to offer savings at a time when tight
budgets are absolutely paramount," he said.
Despite the cost savings and increased flexibility of IT
infrastructure offered by cloud computing, industry experts have
warned that the model is relatively immature and
does not work in every context.
Regulatory or legal requirements are often forgotten, and this
can expose businesses using cloud computing to unnecessary
risk.
The Data Protection Act, for example, requires businesses to
control the way personal data is processed and stored, but this is
extremely difficult with cloud computing, said Andrew Scott,
partner at law firm Dickinson Dees.