Forrester: Take care with the cloud

Cloud computing could be more expensive than traditional methods, but offers benefits if used right, according to experts at Forrester Research.

Forrester analyst James Staten said the use of the emerging technology has advantages from an operational perspective, but it may be more costly.

“The key value is in elasticity to supply peak demand without long-term commitment,” said Staten.

“Hour per hour, cloud costs more than traditional hosting but offers flexibility for peak loads,” he said.

Forrester’s short-term recommendations for IT decision-makers who are considering exploiting the cloud are to put together a convincing business case including experimenting with a public cloud service, and to look at the technology with an open mind and craft a “work in progress” policy for cloud use.

But outages of cloud services such as Gmail – used by corporate users including Guardian News & Media and UK manufacturing group Valeo - were not mentioned in the session as examples of incidents that may have dented corporate confidence in the technology.

Some firms, such as chemicals group Rhodia, see cloud computing as a major challenge due to cultural issues and management of legacy systems.