Canny cloud computing users should separate wheat from chaff

Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Learning the difference between necessary cloud computing services and minimal value-adds will allow companies to maximize their savings when moving to Software-as-a-Service models of IT, according to the Register.

One current trend, the British tech news publication said, is the bundling of many cloud computing services together into a take-it-or-leave-it package, forcing users who want any of the products in the group to pay for all of them - even if they're not all needed.

However, that trend is likely to peter out in the near future, according to the head of infrastructure and management at the U.K.'s Royal Mail, Adrian Steel.

"Companies like Microsoft will end up investing more of their development resources in the core, mainstream programs. This is good for everyone, moving us to a stack-it-high, sell-it-cheap model for software - a bit like supermarkets," he said in an interview with the Register.

Companies moving into the cloud should also be sure to have robust service level agreements in place when contracting important functions to SaaS providers, experts say.