Sebastian Piotrowski is cautious about data security in cloud computing. The systems engineering lead at Johnson & Johnson says the company processes data using the Amazon Web Services cloud but keeps the data fully obscured.

His current cloud efforts are geared at managing the disruption of peak-and-valley computing requirements. He says he is currently working with business partners to move applications out of the J&J grid and into the cloud in an ongoing proof of concept, according to a SearchCloudComputing.com article. A gradual grid-to-cloud applications migration is also underway at J&J's Pharma R&D unit, as reported earlier.

Migration decisions are made using the simplest of business math at J&J: comparing grid vs. cloud costs. Bandwidth and storage requirements drive the calculation.

Cloud computing remains a small piece of the J&J IT pie, but Piotrowski says expansion is just a matter of time. Hybrid models, in fact, which permit application scaling out of the grid and into the cloud, "are too economical to avoid," the article says.

- read the article [1]
- here's our earlier coverage [2]

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