"Those who say that cloud is just a deployment choice, just a technology option, have shut their eyes to the wider opportunity and potential that the cloud context opens up."
That "potential" has yet to prove itself in any meaningful way.
I understand your deep desire for everyone to simply accept this "potential" as having a basis in fact but it's just not there yet and may never be.
Other "potentials" include:
Loss of connectivity. (Always happens at the worst possible time.)
Huge security risks, especially if its in the US and its "Patriot Act". (Do you realy trust ALL of Google's or Microsoft's employees?)
The cloud becomes an equalizer instead of computing being a competitive tool. (Hey we are all using the same platform and applications, somehow we all seem to get the same results.)
Loss of responsiveness to user needs. It was not a cost factor that drove PC's into the enterprise, it was the ability for the user to do things others were not doing and the ability to make changes quickly. The paradigm of centralised computing (big iron and terminals) simply didn't fit users needs. Adding fancy graphics isn't going to change that.
In the midst of the Enterprise Irregulars discussion that ensued from Michael Krigsman’s Monday blog post Cloud-based IT failure halts Virgin flights — when many of us complained it wasn’t a cloud instance at all — Michael posted this plea:
“How does one determine whether a solution is ‘cloud’ or not — what are the rules?”
It’s a fair question. When explaining cloud, I often allude to the ancient Indian parable of the blind men and the elephant, in which each man grabbed a different part of the elephant and, because they didn’t see the whole creature, took it to be something quite different. The point being that cloud is exactly like that, and most of the definitions out there get it wrong because they focus on a part rather than the whole.
My definition highlights four components, which I’ll set out below in a moment (or hear me explain them in this webinar, which I recorded last week). Three of the four components are often talked about individually, and the fourth is too often neglected altogether. The neglected component is one that I call ‘cloud scale’, and it’s the one that sets the all-important context in which all the others come together as a unified whole. Yet it’s the one most often ignored or denied, especially when people try to implement what they perceive as cloud on a private computing stack. What I say to them is almost becoming something of a catchphrase: “You can’t take computing out of the cloud and still call it cloud computing.”
The whole point of cloud computing is to be able to operate in the cloud — in that global, 24×7, connected universe where you can instantly reach and interact with your customers, your partners and your mobile employees, as well as tapping into an expanding cornucopia of third-party resources and services that can help you achieve business results faster, better and at lower cost. Those who say that cloud is just a deployment choice, just a technology option, have shut their eyes to the wider opportunity and potential that the cloud context opens up. They’re still building application platforms and business systems that are designed without any acknowledgement of that global web of connections and resources — as if in today’s business environment, being connected is just an afterthought, an optional extra. Maybe for some applications it is, but their numbers are shrinking daily.
