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Cloud Computing: Working Through the Details
Many early adopters of cloud computing are enjoying the benefits, but the journey isn’t necessarily without bumps. Consider the case of Eli Lilly. Lilly enjoys all that benefits that utility-like on-demand computing can provide.
At Eli Lilly, hundreds of scientists have been using Amazon AWS computing power to perform high-performance research. Storage and processing power can be adjusted up or down based on the current activities in the business. An Amazon virtual server can be deployed in three minutes compared to the previous seven and a half weeks that had been needed to bring a new machine on line. Dave Powers of Eli Lilly said that “the deployment time is really what impressed us. It’s just shy of instantaneous.” Powers also sees the cloud as a focal point where internal researchers could share and collaborate with researchers from outside their company.
That Amazon-Lilly relationship was reported to have hit a snag this summer though. In late July an article in Search Cloud Computing reported that Eli Lilly was planning to drop the use of Amazon services or at least to not to move forward with expanded use of the service because of a conflict over terms in the licensing, particularly in the area of legal indemnification. The report said that Eli Lilly wanted Amazon to accept more accountability for potential problems that might occur, like security breaches and network outages. But Amazon was said to have pushed back. Eli Lilly was said to have been frustrated that Amazon was unwilling to negotiate anything different than what was part of their standard contract. The story was later disputed by Amazon’ CTO Werner Vogels.
While the story wasn’t true, it does highlight the anxiety that many customers are feeling about cloud computing. Customers need to be able to come to terms with their cloud vendors on important contract points, especially in the area of how potential risks are to be shared by the two parties. It also highlights the need for vendors to be totally transparent in their licensing terms to win over customers who are hesitant to jump over to the cloud.
