As last year's legacy of the credit crunch still lingers and businesses tighten their technology belts, is it wise to have our heads in the Cloud? OpenSpan founder Francis Carden takes a look at the IT landscape over the coming months.

As CIOs defer decisions to CFOs, I'd love to talk IT strategy but it'll be all about tactics for 2009: becoming more practical and doing more with less. This means how to improve user productivity, derive more business value out of existing applications, and bridge the gap between new applications, services and the complex world of 'everything else' in use across virtually every Global 2000 organisation. 

Integration challenges will re-appear as a central IT focus area. With large-scale, service-oriented architecture (SOA) projects flat-lining, organisations will once again focus energies on integration projects key to major business initiatives. This is especially true within the financial services industry where major mergers are occurring almost weekly, causing forced marriages between incompatible application partners. IT projects will also require a three month (or less) return on investment as organisations look to do more with less by optimising existing applications to improve specific business practices. 

But it's the re-discovery of the corporate desktop that will offer the biggest opportunity for both true business agility and cost savings. As enterprises move towards SOA, thin-client architectures and Cloud computing, little attention has been paid to the desktop. However, it is at the intersection of customers, partners and employees. 

This increased focus on the desktop will come from two directions: First, organisations will take a top-down approach, focusing on how new applications and services from The Cloud are consumed by users and integrated into existing desktop environments. Second, from a bottom-up perspective, organisations will uncover huge productivity gains and increased business intelligence by tapping into the user interactions occurring at the desktop. The root causes of business process bottlenecks will be identified, workflows will be automated, fine-grained user metrics will be fed into business intelligence and business activity monitoring solutions; all by tapping into the power of the desktop.

In addition, the Cloud momentum will continue to grow. Today’s economic climate is a perfect storm for Cloud computing, with low barriers to entry, cost saving potential, simplified operations/management, enhanced security, and device independence all pointing towards its success this year.

The challenges ahead

However, Cloud computing challenges will appear - integration challenges in particular will take centre stage. Integrating an application in the cloud with a web application via application programming interfaces (APIs) is one thing, but integrating an application in the cloud with the rest of your enterprise applications is quite another, especially when you might not own or have access to source code. And copy-and-paste is not an integration solution.

Google Enterprise Application deployments will grow but not flourish until they are easier to integrate into the existing enterprise infrastructure - and integrating with existing enterprise applications is a must. Outlook, for example, does a respectable job but even that took years. It’s very API-dependent.

Virtualisation adoption will continue to grow, given the (assumed) cost savings potential. The challenges of integrating virtualised applications with non-virtualised applications, or even two virtualised applications hosted in different virtual environments, will come to the fore. But virtualisation is not a magic bullet. There are significant challenges when trying to integrate virtualised and non-virtualised applications, as well as when integrating virtualised applications built on different hypervisor technologies.

As virtualised environments become more prevalent, enterprises are starting to grapple with the challenges of integrating data between virtualised applications or between a virtualised application and any legacy application hosted outside of a virtualised environment.

Presentation-tier integration will emerge as a key enabling technology for Cloud computing, while traditional integration techniques that rely upon APIs, connectors or web services will continue to be leveraged for traditional integration projects.

However, a different approach that leverages the user interface will solve some new integration challenges, such as integrating virtualised applications, third-party/software as a service (SaaS)/Cloud applications without well constructed APIs or access to source code, and the wide range of desktop and closed legacy applications still in use across virtually every enterprise. 

With less funding for large-scale SOA projects, organisations will look to alternate technology solutions that allow them to leverage existing applications while still integrating the new applications and services. And unlike previous presentation-tier integration techniques, modern approaches provide a significant improvement in robustness and scalability.

A silver lining?

Regardless of the popularity of or the case for Cloud computing, I believe that in 2009 many businesses will choose to retain some control at the desktop level. Some have too much invested in client or native applications and too many legacy ties to mainframes and older technology, whilst others simply don't trust (or lawyers advise against using) outside service providers to host or process sensitive data. 

Another problem with third-party services can be surprises – for example, a service provider that decides not to extend a platform even though the enterprise needs it, thereby throwing the investment into danger. 

But let’s face it, many companies are still at earlier stage of contemplating or making limited virtualisation steps, or continuing to cautiously think through SOA. In any case, the need for quick ROI will make integration a top priority.

For more on Cloud computing, visit KnowledgeBoard.com sister site BusinessCloud9