I was at a social gathering recently and someone asked me about my new job. I said, "I'm doing marketing for the CA Technologies cloud computing business." Recognizing that this is the point at which most people lose interest, I stopped there. However, someone else said, "What IS cloud computing?" Before I could concoct a concise answer that would shed any light on this, someone (who has spent most of his career selling beer) said, "It's basically just the Internet." Was he right? No, he wasn't. But it was the right answer for the audience.
Meanwhile, I spent the next 10 minutes explaining cloud computing to the person who was stuck next to me, while everyone else was having an interactive conversation. I owe that person an apology for wasting 10 minutes of their life.
Both Microsoft and IBM have ventured into America's living rooms with cloud television ads. One uses "To the Cloud" as the slogan and apparent new answer to life, the universe, and everything. I would love to know what they are trying to achieve. Could there have been extra money left in the marketing budget and it was "use it or lose it" time?
The fact is the American public, with the exception of its nerds (or geeks, depending on which you feel is more of a compliment) doesn't and won't care. Here's why...
Cloud computing is extremely complex. If you disagree, then you should consider if you are happy with how much you have in common with Comic Book Guy. The easy way out would be to give a few examples of public cloud services. You could say "It's the difference between installing Outlook on your computer, versus using an online service such as Hotmail." Oh wait, that sounds like the Internet again. So you say "But the Internet is a network and Hotmail is a Web service. The difference of cloud is that it's pay as you go." But Hotmail is free. Whoops. Okay bad example. How about Turbo Tax? You used to buy the CD, install it on your computer and do your taxes. Now they have a cloud model, where you pay certain amounts of money to use certain functions. Or Mozy, where instead of buying an extra hard drive, you pay for storage online and you pay based on the amount that you consume. But the public has no need to call this cloud computing. Sounds like an online service, and it is. And they know what that means already. Leave well enough alone. What happens in data centers should stay in data centers.
"Well," you say (as your dwindling audience tries to escape), "there is more to it. It may be transparent to you but from the perspective of the cloud service provider, it enables them to scale with demand by using technologies such as virtualization and automation that dynamically re-allocate capacity and compute resources to manage and optimize IT infrastructure and enable charge back." Cue the sound of a record needle being dragged across a record.
"Okay, forget that. Let's say you work in a big company in an IT department. Instead of installing all of your software locally, you can keep most of it on a pool of servers and storage arrays and enable role-based access to the software, infrastructure, and development platforms and customize the security, performance, and availability to the needs of each user, while tracking individual consumption and charging the business units accordingly. And you can combine your private cloud with public cloud to make a hybrid cloud. Isn't that cool?"
Congratulations. You now have zero friends. Thankfully, your avatar has many. But next time, remember, if you want to continue receiving invitations to social gatherings of any sort, you may be better off saying, "cloud computing is basically just the Internet."