Dear Last Server, could you switch off the light while leaving the corporate data Centre ?

Is cloud an engine of new age technology? Cloud computing is upturning the traditional approach to IT in many ways. It is going at a pace we had anticipated, or much faster?

This is no longer a pilot balloon approach of “can we host our website or a small application first?” This is big Now.. the enterprises who used to proudly discuss their mammoth data centers are now thinking to move to cloud completely. Capital One bank is all in cloud now, Johnson & Johnson plans to move 80% of its infrastructure to cloud, GE has indicated that it will close 34 data centers. Digital native organizations are moving even more aggressively. Most of them don’t even have a data center of their own.

Is cloud computing for you? The answer is yes. And it’s a matter of how it can be applied from an application, infrastructure integration and development prospective. Many surveys in data center show that the shift towards cloud is going at a higher speed than anticipated and most of the CIOs are now not worried about security, manageability and control like they used to think few years back. With many of the enterprise level MSP partners to support you in your journey, your IT team gets the perfect guidance and supporting arm. While co-location providers are also experiencing significant growth in the past few years, shrinking IT budget and stagnant capital budget has softened demand for their IT services.

What about the unforeseen consequences? Is there any side effect to the transformation which is happening in the current IT evolution? What will enterprises do with the white elephant data center which will be left un used? They can put it for sale. But this warrants to the eventual question, who will buy those data centers? Good news is there is a growing demand of third tier data centers who are looking for such setups to serve the secondary market. There are also many retail e-commerce companies who need good estate to make them their ware houses in tier-I cities. But it’s a hope for short term to soak up the excess capacity.

So how do look at the wired situation and what is your approach towards your digital transformation journey? Do you plan to go all in? It takes many years to achieve a complete cloud migration process. the longer you take to make the decision, the chances are more that you will be left with an idle corporate datacenter that nobody wants.