On their corporate blog, Orange Business asks “Are the IT department’s days numbered?” The idea is that with the rise of cloud computing and a proliferation of IT resources being offered as a service, will corporations even need an IT department? Well, Orange Business isn’t exactly a neutral observer here, as they do big business in IT and network outsourcing, and their chief competitor is often that same internal IT department that prefers to in-source and they clearly would do well if it became an endangered species.
But nevertheless, at least on the surface the tide does seem to be turning in this direction, though I haven’t heard it stated so baldly yet. I think that at the very least, the responsibilities of an IT department are going to shift rather rapidly, though not tomorrow and not next week. Certainly that is what many large telcos are thinking as they buy up cloud and colocation assets and dream of new revenues to chase.
Meanwhile, Orange Business also opened a new international gateway in Mumbai after receiving clearance from regulators. Orange is already in India of course, having achieved a national long distance license in 2008 and an ISP license in 2009. India’s red tape is formidable, but the potential prize is large and Orange already has a dozen Telepresence-ready PoPs there.
And back in New York, Orange Business’s Trading Solutions division has selected Equinix’s NY4 IBX in Secaucus. Not for US markets, but rather for trading partners in Brazil. Not coincidentally, Equinix recently bought into Brazil’s ALOG via a joint venture, whose facilities in Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo and Tamboré the Trading Solutions division also connects to.
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Categories: Cloud Computing · Datacenter
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The IT depts. of the future will probably be smaller and narrowly focused. The main functions would be specialty servers for private data and trade secrets, last chance backups (in case of sabotage at the cloud provider), support techs. for mobile gadgets, and devs. for custom reports and web pages. There will always be a need for faster turn-around on certain things.
Privacy laws and Sarbanes-Oxley are two areas of concern. I doubt if the board of directors of a major corporation would move so much of their IT operation up into an off-site cloud that they become vulnerable to lawsuits or regulatory intervention.