LONDON – The adoption of cloud computing is being “overhyped” by the IT industry, according to the vice- president of networking firm Brocade Communications Systems Inc.
Cloud computing will lack a serious uptake for another 10 years, except for private clouds within businesses, John McHugh told delegates at the NetEvents Summit in Istanbul. Until then, it will likely only form a relatively small part of businesses’ setup.
“Cloud computing is going to be adopted much more slowly than predicted,” he said.
In a separate prediction, McHugh also forecast that rival Cisco Systems Inc. will enter the storage market in pursuit of better profit margins.
McHugh said there was a “real problem” with the complexity of public cloud computing in its current form.
“Say I have a few cloud apps that need extra capacity, I have to go to multiple providers, get good agreements, feel comfortble with them and with the predicatibility and reliability of what they’re offering,” McHugh said. “When is there going to be more of an easy service? It’s not going to happen for 10 years.”
Cisco would enter the storage market in the next five years, the Brocade VP also predicted. The move, he said would be driven by dramatically falling sales margins for networking suppliers.
“There will be a relentless pursuit of high margins,” McHugh said of one of Brocade’s largest rivals. “Cisco will become more of a systems than a networking company.”
McHugh stood by the results of predictions he had made at the same event in 2006, including forecasts that by this year security concerns would be driving and limiting the adoption of different technology, and that networking would spur innovation in other areas of IT.
