Though spending on cloud-computing services is expected to increase from 2011 through 2014, with India posting the highest growth during the next 12 months, many large companies, banks, and governments may be wary of embracing the system fully.

“Banks may put certain work loads on the private cloud and move some work loads to the public cloud. But it will be rare for a large enterprise to move fully to the cloud in the foreseeable future,” said Mr Sid Deshpande, Senior Research Analyst, Gartner.

The main problem with banks moving to the public cloud is security and the requirement of regulations.

According to Mr B. Murali Nair, Chief Technology Officer, Lakshmi Vilas Bank, “RBI guidelines are not yet clear on banks using a public cloud.”

But things that cannot move today may make the move tomorrow, said Mr Sunil Chavan, Director, Software Group & Cloud solutions, Asia Pacific, Hitachi Data Systems. “Cloud may be good for centralised areas, but remote offices may not find them useful,” he pointed out.

Apart from regulations and availability of bandwidth, there is a third class that may not make it to the cloud-legacy applications. “Applications that are hardwired to an appliance may find it difficult to migrate to the cloud,” said Mr Vishnu Bhat, Vice-President and Head, Cloud Services, Infosys.

Core data

While many companies are willing to put what they call “non-core” applications on the cloud, others are of the opinion that nothing is non-core, and Mr Nair is one of them. “It is difficult for banks to segregate data as core and non-core. In my opinion, all data available in the bank is sensitive in nature and will have to be put under the category core.”

Fortunately for cloud companies, not every bank thinks along these lines. Mr C.V.G Prasad, Chief Information Officer, ING Vysya Bank, said, “Cloud computing is certainly part of our strategy. However, like many banks, we will first be looking at private cloud before we look at a public cloud as an option.”

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