Harte, McKinnon square off over cloud computing

Michael Lawrey, executive director of architecture at Telstra Media

McKinnon's cautious approach was supported by Michael Lawrey, executive director of infrastructure at Telstra Media, who gave a frank assessment of the telco's current capability.

A true utility-style cloud compute for enterprise customer was "some distance" away, he said.

"The service orchestration and infrastructure required is incredibly complex and still in its infancy," he said.

Lawrey said that customers could purchase "the basic stuff" from the likes of Amazon.com and Salesforce.com, but after scoping solutions by the likes of Verizon and BT and vendors such as IBM, Cisco and BMC, Lawrey  was convinced that solutions were not flexible or complex enough for the "top end of town".

Even Telstra's "Network Computing Services" cloud play was "more of a managed service" than a "full dial-up, dial-down" cloud solution, he said, which was "where the customer wants to be."

Lawrey said he did not expect such a solution to be available to enterprise customers "on a commercial scale" until mid-2011.

He expected customers would drive vendors to adopt a utility-style model, but raised concerns as to whether suppliers were prepared to invest in large data centres without anchor tenants signed up.

Suppliers need "some sense of certainty to invest capital," he said.

For this reason, Lawrey expected enterprise IT infrastructure cheaper to be cheaper in "chunks" than "a byte today and a byte tomorrow.

"The price will be higher on the cloud than buying a fixed lump," he said.

Telstra may overcome this problem, he said, by being the anchor tenant of its own cloud compute before offering it on a commercial scale.