Stefan Mileschin

A study of by prominent British IT academic Professor Jim Norton suggests that CIOs should not trust the cloud and should look at replacing their legacy systems with something open saucey instead.

Big tech has been trying to convince the word and its dog that it is better to use proprietary systems based on a cloud strategy.

But a study by Professor Jim Norton said there is more to be gained from open systems than an immature cloud.

Norton's study, which was commissioned by travel industry processing giant Amadeus, assessed the role of open source software in critical transaction systems.

Apparently airlines and railways have been using outdated mid-range and mainframe systems for several decades and are long due for an upgrade.

In most cases, Norton argues that re-engineering internal IT using open source software is more sensible than bunging it all on a cloud.

He said that open source provides enterprise IT with easier access to innovation via a "great global self-re-enforcing community of shared resources, ideas and development".

Quoting other studies from the London School of Economics, Norton said that investments to deploy open source in-house drives longer-term savings of 20 percent over anything else.

True, you have to go through a slightly more expensive transition period and such cost savings "don't apply to everyone".

However, Norton ruled out public cloud computing services which he felt were still half-baked.

He said that interoperability barely exists, nor does the ability to audit the security of hosted services.

He warned of the dangers of being pushed too quickly in the cloud direction because it was an immature business.

Business processes will eventually catch up with the technology, but they are not there yet, he said.

http://news.techeye.net/internet/stu...e-before-cloud