A commercial broadcaster recently showed a series of 5 infotainment programs about Cloud. After 15 minutes into the first one, one of the panel members said (with a very happy expression); “I have been working in the Cloud for 5 years already, and it’s great! Everybody should do it!”. I watched in disbelief and waited for the moderator to ask: “Well that’s fantastic! What is it you exactly DO in the Cloud?!”. But no, this was infotainment. So everybody looked in the camera thinking; “See?!? We were right all the time!!” I found myself yelling at the television:”IT’S THE INTERNET! YOU #$@%#$! YOU ARE JUST USING THE INTERNET!!!”.
I realized how comforting it must be to be naive. But even naivety has a limit and I stopped after 2,5 episodes. It more or less confirmed what I read, see and hear often. Marketing, Press and IT Analysts have done a brilliant job selling the Cloud concept and our business managers embrace it because of all the right reasons (on-demand, pay-as-you-go, lower OPEX, less staff to manage, Agile etc.). And before you think I am a grumpy old mainframer, I am not!! I see many advantages in many of the Cloud offerings. It is definitely happening around us already and we must embrace it.
But, Cloud is not the solution to all our problems and neither were PC’s, Object Orientation, Internet, SOA, webservices and Virtualization. And yet, all these technologies were once positioned as THE solution to all problems. Why is it that we always seem to be looking for THE solution for ALL problems? There have been many solutions to many problems, only to discover that , in the meantime, another minor issue had turned into a huge challenge that needed a new solution.
I understand that it’s human nature to look for ONE solution, as is being overly optimistic about every new technology that is presented to us. But especially those of us who have been around for a while know from experience that most new technologies have mainly added complexity to IT. Don’t get me wrong, all of them have brought mankind many wonderful things, but for the IT department, they often meant more complexity to manage and less budget to do it with. Cloud is another step in IT. And for most of us an addition to what we already have, so it must be connected. Connecting is never easy, but connecting different Cloud Services with each other AND the IT infrastructure already in place is NOT easy.
Many companies are experiencing Virtual Stall, because managing the 1000’s of virtualized images on the available hardware in a flexible way proves to be very complex. Getting it under control requires a lot of new tools, rethinking of architectures and a different attitude. Cloud Stall will happen if we approach it in the same way. Only ice-cold and pragmatic analysis of the different possibilities will prevent this. Let’s embrace new technology, but let’s do it in a way that proves we are a grown up industry.
For another interesting view on this, read IDC's opinion piece "IT Consumers Transform the Enterprise - Are You Ready? (May, 2011) here: http://bit.ly/vLhCcj