The private cloud was one of the topics of discussion when David Parsons and Siki Giunta from CSC (Computer Sciences Corporation) sat down with SiliconANGLE Founder John Furrier and Wikibon Co-Founder Dave Vellante at VMworld 2011. Parsons is the Corporate VP of Global Alliances and CMO at CSC, and Giunta is VP of CSC's Cloud division.

Furrier posed the question of what core things need to be solved now to make cloud truly industrial strength. Giunta responded that there are two types of problems, the first being licensing issues. She claimed that not every software vendor has their act together, and when one piece of your stack costs as much as your entire cloud for three years, customers tend avoid that route. The second problem is execution. She said, "Everyone wants to talk about the next big thing in cloud, but [we] need to talk about what can be done today in the short term, so that we can bring value-added agility to the business."

Vellante wanted to know where the cloud action is right now. Parsons shared that most of their activity is currently in the private cloud. He said it starts with the client's need to be risk-averse. He observed, "Everyone's buying into the vision of the future of cloud -- it's exciting, it's sexy -- but how do you get there?" He went on to say that many of these workloads that clients want to move into a cloud service delivery model are well-suited to a private environment. They are starting to see increasing client interest in taking some of the other Tier2 and Tier3 workloads that support business processes and moving those in as well. He stated, "We're spending a lot of time and money on the application services side -- really industrializing services that will move onto this private cloud environment and allow a company to test drive it and realize the benefit of it."

Vellante's next question was, "What makes this cloud?" Giunta replied that it's the ability to flex up and flex down. She elaborated, "The cost-effectiveness is the ability to be able to maximize their resources for the need of the business at that time. If a workload runs for eight hours, why should they have infrastructure twenty-four hours?"

Giunta shared a few of the CSC secrets to success. She said that CSC really accepted the fact that they needed to transition their culture and offering to "as a service." They saw the cloud as a good growth path for their outsourcing. She summarized how they very rapidly made a plan, executed the plan, made a strategy, selected partners, and delivered solutions. She pointed out, "We are all about getting references and referenceability. If you don't have a story to tell about what you've tried and what worked and what didn't work, you'll never get the credibility."

Furrier asked about any emerging technologies on CSC's radar that would be instrumental in the growth path of their success. Guinta maintained that everything that's infrastructure is pretty much locked in. She also discussed how excited she is about the future of how to connect the end user into the cloud with every type of device possible.

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