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Cloud computing – The way to go
- By Fabrice Talbot
A couple of weeks ago, The Economist hosted a lively debate on Cloud Computing and cloud computing companies. Their position on this matter is, and I quote:
“This house believes that the cloud can’t be entirely trusted”. This statement makes it hard for us to put them on one side of the fence, or the other. However I found the debate to be quite interesting. So here is our statement: “We do believe in cloud computing technology“.
Opponents to cloud solutions cited security, bandwidth, human capital, and customer reluctance to such technological change as main arguments against the cloud migration. I share Mark’s Benioff (CEO of Salesforce) point of view when he says that “this debate would have been remarkably similar 20 years ago“.
Security: sure cloud security is a concern for everyone, but it has been a concern since the birth of the IT industry. Still, it seems fine for those opponents to have Microsoft releasing security patches sometimes on a weekly basis.
Bandwidth: during my university days, I was connecting to the Internet with a 45K/s. modem and it was considered fast. Nobody could have predicted that sharing videos on the Internet would become a commodity. So I would not worry too much about the increase of bandwidth.
Human capital: this is debatable whether cloud computing services will lead to net creation or deletion of jobs. I will leave that to economists. One thing that is clear to me is that companies reluctant to adopt cloud technology will become less competitive and be threatened by new entrants that offer a better and cheaper service. Remember that at the end of the day it is the company management who decides to create or cut jobs, not the cloud computing architecture.
Customer reluctance: as for what customers choose, I agree with Mark Benioff’s statement:“Customers are making this choice—and voting their trust with their euros, pounds, yen and dollars—because the software industry grew too greedy, too complex and too out of touch with the customer. Outrageously expensive to buy, costly to maintain and difficult to change, traditional client/server software has failed customers for years”. When you go shopping on Saturday, do you mind buying clothes from big brand stores made in China? Not really when they are three times less expansive than US made clothes.
Here is an introduction on the cloud computing services and its benefits.
If you are interested to read more on this topic, we suggest you read Network World and TechnoSailor take on the cloud.
As usual, we are interested to know what is your take on enterprise cloud computing. Leave us a comment.
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Mark Liberatore
5-4-2010
Yes Microsoft publishes a continuous flow of security patches. To say that this has broad-brush approval or is just "OK" is absurd. It is most definitely not "OK". It introduces the need for support personnel to ensure continuity of the enterprise. It causes interruption of service, even if only a delay. At times it introduces conflicts with other software products which require resources to troubleshoot and build patches for affected services. Nobody likes this, and it is one of the key reasons people don't like Microsoft. Unfortunately the question of using Microsoft or virtually any competitive operating environment or productivity software is seen as almost a religious discussion, and it is not taken seriously.
Second, the question of bandwidth is not a matter of what the future holds, but rather what will the user experiences now. The user experience is a key evaluation factor in determining whether any technology offers efficiency. The round-trip time for a user query to be sent out to any processing environment, to be processed and returned to the user will be perceived as the system speed. If users see lag times, they won't care that it is the result of poor existing bandwidth. They will just complain that the "system" is slow. Improving the network in the future is insufficient to win the user community. Change management will be required.
I agree that cloud computing offers a key enabling technology. But you have to come up with a stronger arguments if you are going to win people over.