According to a study by the BT Group, 61% of IT decision-makers in France believe that the cloud will transform the way they work. But this key development in business IT is still coming up against a number of prejudices and particularly biased marketing pitches.
It is common to contrast the cloud with a more serious and reliable form of IT, that of legacy systems, which have proved their worth and are the only ones capable of hosting a company's business tools and sensitive data. Yet there are many examples that run counter to these preconceptions.
Why choose to move away from legacy systems
The AMF's information system is hosted in the cloud. This is also the case for many banks and insurance companies. Why have these institutions and companies with particularly sensitive data made this choice, rather than keeping their traditional legacy systems, which are often considered more solid and secure?
Firstly, they assessed the difference between their own security resources and those of cloud operators. The major operators invest colossally in the physical security of their infrastructures, surveillance, redundancy and fire-fighting systems, as well as in protection against intrusions and computer attacks. IT architecture and security issues are handled by specialists whose skills are usually only available to CAC40 groups. Data availability, confidentiality and integrity are therefore much more effectively ensured than by an in-house Information Systems Department (ISD), regardless of the resources at its disposal.
The logic that drives companies to entrust their data to specialist service providers is the same as that which drives everyone to entrust their money to a bank rather than keep it under their ear: the bank has reached a level of equipment and security expertise that no private individual can acquire.
Those financial institutions that have opted for the cloud have also been won over by its flexibility. Predictability of costs, agility and elasticity of resources are decisive advantages that change the life of every IT department and the business as a whole. The risks of overinvestment in infrastructure are eliminated, along with the slowness and downtime associated with peak workloads.
Taking account of the changing role of CIOs
But these arguments, which have made the cloud such a success, are now being supplemented by a new observation: in companies whose information systems have moved to the cloud, the IT department is no longer just a cost and an independent service, but a supplier of applications that is fully integrated with the other business lines. It is these CIOs who are now enabling their companies to keep pace in the race for innovation. The time saved by outsourcing is now devoted to researching and deploying ways of optimising the company's activity, thereby increasing its productivity and helping it to evolve.
The opposition between legacy systems and cloud computing is too often presented in terms of a choice between traditional security and losing control of one's data. It's time to move away from this outdated dichotomy and recognise that the role of IT Departments is no longer simply to maintain a static system, but to innovate and deploy new tools to drive business growth.
Pierre Schaller
Deputy CEO of Cloud Temple
Opinion piece originally published on Les Echos.fr