Cloud Computing – what say ye, lads. Are you fer it or agin it? Or are you just hoping to retire before it happens?
I recently stumbled on an Accenture report (Windows IT Pro) which estimates that between now and 2014, SMB’s will spend 100 BILLION on cloud computing. Can you dig it?
And a recent IBM survey of ‘IT pros’, indicates that they think that by 2015, cloud computing and mobile technologies will be the most ‘in demand platforms for software development’. Get otta town!
Is that possible? I can dismiss the Windows IT Pro thing, duh, they are all on Windows, I’d look for an alternative too. But IBM? They are talking about people like us (although to be truthful I like to think there’s nobody quite like me). And IBM hasn’t increased it’s line of cloud offerings dramatically, providing a whole spectrum of options from fully managed to nearly fully public, for their health. They think they can make a pant load off of it.
Of course, the knock on cloud computing has always been first, security, and second, your ability to control your hardware and software directly.
For a long time I thought that security would be the major hurdle. You’re going to trust your data to who? But then I started thinking about the security situation in many of the i shops that I am familiar with. Very few of them have ever gone through an exhaustive security check up. Tends to be hit or miss. Nothing here and the death penalty over there. Maybe a consistent, state of the art, encrypted security structure that applied across the board would be a plus for many shops.
And I also thought that actually controlling / owning (so to speak) your hardware and software would be important to a lot of CIO’s. It’s an emotional issue, the desire of people to have their hands on things but then I was thinking how the cloud might simplify the budget life of the CIO. In some weird way, I think it shifts the thinking away from ‘what is this going to cost’ and toward ‘what resources do we really need for our company and what will that cost us’. You can never underestimate the importance of a simple change in wording or point of reference. In the end, we are not rational beings who have emotions as much as we are emotional beings who try to think rationally on occasion.
Finally, I have to wonder if using cloud resources would not spur the adoption of new tools and techniques. I mean what’s the main reason most of us are still using PDM? Yes, because we are use to it is one reason, but the fact that most of us can’t build a good case for adding it to our software lease cost is another. But what if we were using a cloud platform where everything was bundled into one price, including access to all of the latest tools? You wouldn’t have to install them, just use them. And what about OS upgrades? Would the cloud take care of that and keep all of us on the latest operating system releases without incurring steep software cost penalties?
Of course, it’s not all sausages and gravy for cloud computing. I can see two obstacles (or at least confusion points) right off the bat. But I’ve taken up enough of your time. More on that in the next update.
In the meantime, what about you? Five years ago I thought cloud computing was just another right wing, socialist conspiracy. But now, not so sure. So, what say ye, lads. Are you fer it, or agin it?
