Cloud computing based on virtualisation technology will fix
CIOs'main problems - how to do more with less while reducing their
carbon footprint, says the woman who may be the US's new chief
technology officer.
Speaking exclusively to Computer Weekly, Padmasree Warrior,
Cisco's CTO and one of
US president Obama's candidates for American CTO, said few
companies want or need to own all their IT kit, but they did want
to choose what they do with their IT and where they do it.
Firms will keep control of some business critical systems and
those that gave them competitive advantage, but will want to seek
lowest cost providers for the rest, she says.
The cloud computing model was still evolving, driving the
supplier market into a transition phase that could rewrite IT
suppliers' rivalries and partnerships, she said.
Warrior said Cisco's position as the dominant supplier of
networking products put it in a strong position to lead the
development of the new world.
Warrior played down talk of Cisco competing for market
dominance. But last month's deal with Dell on servers puts Cisco
into direct competition with firms such as Hewlett-Packardand IBM.
Until now they were close partners.
To deliver the cloud's promise, many of the large players were
going to have to work together, she said. Cisco was "very open and
willing"to work with HP, IBM, EMC, VM (Cisco owns 2% of the
virtualisation company which is itself an EMC subsidiary), even
Microsoft, she said.
"It is the only way the industry will move forward," she says.
"We are going to have to work with many partners, and we recognise
that."
In her vision CIOs will want flexible access to public and
private clouds. The decision will be where best to host the
company's applications, on an internal or an external cloud, she
said.
So much for the enterprise -what about the workers?
As digital video has improved, faster networks have developed
and traffic prices fallen, the psychological barriers to virtual
meetings have melted away, as Cisco's own internal experience has
shown, she said.
The recession, globalisation and climate change are forcing
firms to rethink how they work, Warrior said. Travel was among the
first budget items to be cut. This bumped up demand for products
such astelepresence and web conferencing, because they gave workers
"face time" without having to be there.
But workers who had to travel did not want to be disadvantaged,
she said. The need to be fully functional anywhere, any time, any
place was driving mobile applications, and helped the shift towards
cloud computing, she said.
One example was a Webex application for Apple's iPhone that
Cisco showed at last month's Consumer Exhibition Show in Las Vegas,
Warrior said.
"Customers want to do more with less, so any technology or
solution that allows them to be more productive is something they
will invest in -for example, telepresence and virtualisation," she
says.
Warrior may be right, technologically speaking. But recession
still grips the world. Only brave boards will loosen the
purse-strings now.