Businesses sing praises of cloud computing regardless of challenges

Predictive analytics software producer SPSS has this week made its case for cloud computing at its user conference in Prague.

In an interview with Silicon.com, CEO Jack Noonan said: “The whole cloud thing is a terrific deployment opportunity for this kind of technology.

“The greatest thing that ever happened to SPSS was the web."

Noonan went on to explain that a service orientated architecture approach would be fundamental in allowing SPSS technology to improve the data businesses have access to for their CRM and ERP systems. Furthermore, the conference included many glowing references to cloud computing in terms of its possibilities for data predictions from SPSS clients.

Car manufacturer Fiat has been using SPSS PASW Modeler technology, and customer intelligence manager at Fiat Giovanni Lux claims this has increased customer retention by between six and seven percent.

Insurance group RSA’s analytics manager Simon Dudley said that RSA “bought into the whole vision of being a predictive enterprise,” and that RSA plans to expand their SPSS technology in future.

While cloud computing, and in turn, data prediction, have both created excitement in all IT sectors, the risks have not yet fully been explored, and so it seems short-sighted to leap into the cloud without waiting to see how the technology pans out.

Inatech’s Simon Ellis, CTO, said: “Cloud computing brings both benefits and challenges to both customers and infrastructure suppliers. For example, cloud computing allows organisations to size for environments only when they need them, saving massively on infrastructure spending and with cloud computing they can essentially get capacity on demand.

Ellis was as interested and enthusiastic as anyone else in the IT sector, but highlighted some reservations about the new technology.“At last the vision of real GRID computing can start to be realised; but not without another set of challenges,” he conceded.

“For example, how do organisations (both suppliers and clients) measure usage and licence compliance?”

Concluding, Ellis summed the prospects and problems of cloud computing up thus: “With new operating models come new operating challenges.”