Blog, Featured - Monday, September 26, 2011 18:15 - 1 Comment

Aussie cloud not a utility yet: Defence CIO

blog Fascinating comments about the state of Australia’s cloud computing landscape have just arrived from Department of Defence chief information officer Greg Farr (pictured), one of the most respected technology executives of any stripe in Australia.

In this feature article published in the Financial Review’s MIS Magazine (where your humble reporter spent some time a while back), Farr makes it clear he believes the Australian cloud is “a long way away” from looking anything like its US counterpart:

“[Providers] still see a commercial opportunity in value-added services, where a solution is designed around what the customer wants,” Farr says. “That’s a valid thing to do, but it’s different from the US model, which really is about buying [technology as] a commodity, the same as you buy electricity or water.”

With providers like CSC morphing the cloud model into unrecognisable shapes (sorry Bob!) and the cloud computing hype wave beginning to recede substantially in Australia, it’s hard to disagree with Farr’s comments. In my view, much of what is being labelled “cloud computing” in Australia should be more correctly labelled “managed services”, at least until we get more large-scale public cloud providers such as Amazon.com and Rackspace providing on-shore offerings. As always, Farr is one step ahead of the curve when it comes thinking about enterprise IT in Australia.

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