Comments on: The cloud conversation is changing

At the Enterprise Cloud Summit during Interop this year, it became clear that the question is not so much "what is cloud computing," but "how do I use it?"

[empirestatebuddy]

I hear techies talk about this mysterious "cloud" all the time, but still don't know what it is. It just sounds complicated... and a little scary. "OMG! It's the cloud! RUN!" lol

Maybe it's because "windows" are easy to visualize, but "clouds"... well, you can't really touch a cloud. Clouds don't have a defined shape or form. If people want to sell this idea, a name/concept that "normal people" can grasp might help. I mean, a lot of us are still trying to grasp "the web". ;)

[gerrrg]

I'm tired of all these semantics. A few months back it was Net Neutrality, now it's Cloud Computing.

[Voice_Of_Logic]

No, its not. YOU, the press, coerced by big business, want US, the people with the money, to start accepting and oohing and ahhing this cloud crap. Well, no one in their right mind is going to trust their data "in the cloud" to just anyone. If they do, they need their head examined. AND NO - we dont trust Microsoft. We dont trust Google. We dont trust ANYONE but ourselves with our important information. Its bad enough that people in India and China and Estonia and Vietnam and elsewhere, with names like "bob" and "cindy" all of a sudden, can see our information. This ******** needs to stop now.

[cvaldes1831]

Voice_Of_Logic is absolutely correct.

Cloud computing in its present form is absolute garbage.

Look at all the hand wringing when Google services go down for a couple of hours. Now I'm a non-paying Google Mail/Calendar/Voice/Maps/whatever user, but I'd really feel like an idiot if I had staked my entire company's IT operations on Google (and paid money).

And I'm a GOOG shareholder.

Let's just drop this cloud computing cr-p. We can revisit it when YouTube doesn't shut down admin functions on production systems during peak usage hours and when Google Mail doesn't go out because they didn't use the two-person rule for some IPv6 administration tasks (again on a production system).

Cloud computing (as it stands today) is completely asinine.

[allisonis]

The arguments against cloud computing (adoption predictions, or even its definition) remind me of the time when communications networks were advancing from leased line and frame relay technologies to IP networks (a la 2000-03). People proclaimed that large corporations would never rely on the Internet for mission-critical communications. What about reliability? What about security? The critics were sharp.

Yet it only took a few short years for IP-based networks to displace the legacy networks and radically overhaul business networking. Why? The scalability, flexibility and added capabilities (IE remote access) it enabled were massive. Productivity gains and cost savings were real. VPN technologies took care of the security issues, and service providers started offering QoS guarantees.

Now, IP networks are the norm, not the exception.

I see cloud computing as merely the next step in the use of Internet technologies for businesses. I think of it this way: for years we've used clouds in the middle of network and system diagrams to represent what happened on the internet (and outside of our view).

Now, more and more of those icons that resided at the local network, local data center or remote office are vanishing into that cloud graphic. Why? Because they are someone else's problem, and as a company, you no longer have to worry about it.

While that may not be ideal for every part of your network or IT ecosystem, overall, I think it's a good thing...

[osultan]

James:

You have done a fine job of arousing some passions here. So, empirestatebuddy, I actually agree with your sentiment--at some point we, as an industry, need to take the concepts of "cloud computing" and a) make them relatable to regular folks and b) make the benefits clearly understandable (i.e. what is it and why do I care?). I think gerrrg's frustration is probably not unique and is an indicator that we, as an industry, still have work to do. That being said, gerrrg, these are very important conversations to be having right now amongst the folks that will ultimately be building out this infrastructure. As an example, I am guessing you are probably not versed in the intricacies of engine, and don't want to have to learn them to buy your car, but I am guessing you are happy the folks who designed and built your care were so versed.

Omar Sultan
Cisco Systems

Voice_Of_Logic and cvaldes1831--I don't think I have seen anyone suggest folks blindly move critical IT functions into cloud infrastructure before verifying things like security and regulatory compliance, service SLAs and the like. Services like Google, AWS, etc are at a certain point in their evolution--it is incumbent on every customer to do their own due diligence and ensure the cloud based services under consideration meet their requirements--many customers currently find them adequate for their needs, or at least a portion of their needs but for many other customers are sitting-out until issues in areas like security, billing, availability are addressed.

[granmtech]

At first I couldn't quite get "cloud computing". Then I wondered why anyone would do it because of security issues. But the more I learn, (which was a decision I made, to learn more) the more exciting it is to see something in the development stage which really has the potential for enormous financial and efficiency benefits. The NIST definition is really helpful here. There will no doubt be a lot of resistance (secretarial pools weren't keen on PC's instead of typewriters), but in the end the benefits will bring most of us around, I think.

[cvaldes1831]

Cloud computing is years away from being a useful service to the average business or consumer.

Remember when TiVo debuted in 1999? The buzzword back then was convergence. Convergence in the living room! Your TV will be your computer! Your computer will be your TV! This was two years after Microsoft had acquired WebTV and the same year that AOL acquired Netscape, the latter as an attempt to fight Microsoft's WebTV.

Guess what? It's 2009 and convergence still isn't really here, at least in any elegant form that mom and granny could use. Did MSN TV take over the world? How's AOL doing? Yeah, I thought so.

Boxee, Hulu Desktop, Plex, XBMC, even Apple's Front Row and Apple TV don't really provide a great experience for the typical end user. This is still basically beta code (although Boxee claims their stuff is alpha). Maybe another five more years, we'll have something truly useful.

Cloud computing, especially at the enterprise level, is probably a good 8-10 years away from serious consideration. For mainstream technology publications like Cnet, discussing cloud computing now is a waste of column-inches.

It's important for IT architects to continue conversing about these matters in more technical forums and develop the technology, but let's face it: true cloud computing for the masses is years off.

[richard.watson]

Voice-of-logic, for most people the most secure part of their data is with Microsoft or Google, instead of in their badware-ridden PC. Unless you're making an extra effort beyond the average, your data is very insecure already.

Besides, Google usually has far more to lose by losing your data, than you do. Their business model rests on your data being secure. If it got out that they hadn't kept it safe, who would lose most?

[osultan]

cvaldes1831:

I think it would be a mistake to view "cloud computing" as this large monolithic technology. As James has famously said, cloud computing is an operational model, not a technology. Technologies and services will continue evolve to meet the goals of this operational model.

Omar Sultan
Cisco Systems

[alexcnovak]

As an average user of Google, etc., I view cloud computing as more of doing what we've been doing--just in a different format that allows for scale and efficiencies. I love it.