Full virtualisation and cloud storage will 'never' happen

Future of cloud and virtualisation

Vendors may encourage the idea, but not everything will end up virtualised or stored in the cloud.

This was the conclusion of senior research analyst Rene Millman from Gartner, who expressed his opinion during a panel discussion at Storage Expo.

"There are people and vendors out there that would love us to virtualise everything [but] that's never going to happen," he said.

"Lots feel the same with [putting everything in] the cloud as well, but that won't happen either," he added.

Fellow panellist Shawn Scott, head of IT Technical Strategy and Security for Burberry agreed that a hybrid environment is the most likely way forward, especially with the cloud.

"There is always going to be a situation where you need to keep your own data," he said.

"As it stands today we have to take the hybrid approach," he added.

With all the concerns that hold people back from adopting the cloud specifically, Scott cited one area that needed real attention.

"The future [of cloud computing] depends on bandwidth capability. There is [data] I see where I will need GB bandwidth [to move or access it] but now that technology is very expensive," he said.

"Even with the discussion of moving our infrastructure to the cloud, we are still losing cloud potential as [to access it] we need those physical attributes in our internal infrastructure."

Click here for more news from Storage Expo 2009.

Jennifer Scott

Jennifer Scott is a former freelance journalist and currently political reporter for Sky News. She has a varied writing history, having started her career at Dennis Publishing, working in various roles across its business technology titles, including ITPro. Jennifer has specialised in a number of areas over the years and has produced a wealth of content for ITPro, focusing largely on data storage, networking, cloud computing, and telecommunications.

Most recently Jennifer has turned her skills to the political sphere and broadcast journalism, where she has worked for the BBC as a political reporter, before moving to Sky News.