Cloud Computing: More Substance than Hype!
Posted on 03. Sep, 2009 by vbrown in Cloud Computing
I have this strong tendency to view any new technology, methodology, or any claims made by those who have “the answer”, as suspect – and that’s a big understatement! I’ve watched too many Silver Bullets wiz by over the years, only to miss their target. Actually, in my early years as an IT professional I was probably hit and severely wounded by a few of those Silver Bullets! Then I learned to duck, and that’s still my instinct.
When the Cloud Computing bullet was fired, my first reaction was. . . it’s just another form of outsourcing. We’ve been doing this since the Beginning. Batch Service Bureaus, Timesharing Service Bureaus, Application Service Providers (ASP), were all reasonably successful examples from an earlier time. Clouds looked like the same-old-same-old – perhaps with new clothes, in the form of tools like VMWare, Amazon EC2, Microsoft Azure, and a growing list of others.
My clients, however, have not been so dismissive. Like many slick (hyped) solutions in the past, Cloud Computing seems to offer a compelling set of benefits – cost savings, operational efficiencies, shared resources, quality improvements, and maximum utilization of computing platforms. So I’ve been convinced to look more closely, to consider the feasibility of incorporating Clouds into IT strategies.
Guess what! I converted (with some caveats and reservations which I’ll talk about later). This new incarnation of “service bureau” can actually deliver many of the promises offered by the earlier generations. Ain’t evolution exciting? Granted, the hype is still dangerous and the concept has to be implemented with care and common sense, but Cloud Computing can actually offer very significant benefits and may, ultimately be the computing “utility” many of us have believed was coming.
In the meantime, while we wait for a mature computing “utility” to evolve, there are compelling strategic benefits driving the adoption of Cloud Computing, even when it’s implemented as a Private Cloud or Community Cloud. I’ll talk about the types of Clouds and various deployment models in my next post.
Recent Comments