As I continue to have my thinking cap on regarding cloud computing for the enterprise, I’m trying to come up with the different “pins” that will need to get knocked down for real enterprise adoption. I was turned on to a post on ElasticVapor on a cloud computing interoperability effort via a CNET post. The basic tenant of the article is that in order for enterprise to get really excited about moving applications/data into the cloud that they will have to be able to easily port data between different cloud computing providers’ systems.
Since my relatively dense previous post on cloud computing adoption and the enterprise wasn’t all that well loved by this blog’s readership base, I thought I’d post another…
I’m not convinced interoperability will be required for INITIAL cloud computing adoption in the enterprise. I more believe that enterprises will want to be sure they can get their data out of the cloud and into their own systems easily enough, and will worry less about moving it to different cloud providers. I do not think that particularly mission critical aps will be put into the cloud initially. Therefore, enterprises will be less concerned with ensuring that they can move from one cloud to another if there are reliability or cost issues, and more interested in making sure they can just get their data/aps back onto their internal systems.
The real competition here in the cloud space isn’t other cloud providers - it’s the old way of doing computing, internally/at your co-location facility or in your own data center. I think that surges in compute demand are likely to drive the first real enterprise adoption of the cloud.
November 26th, 2008 at 4:34 am
Healy, you make a good point as to why enterprises are less concerned about standards and interoperability, and more concerned about data-in-out of the cloud.
jPeople, the company I ran for 7 years prior to Pixily, provided virtualization services to large companies and what we found is similar to your analysis. They will start with non-critical applications, pilots and so forth, before embracing the cloud. Also, consulting, monitoring and support need to be provided along with the cloud-computing offering. Enterprises will need hand-holding before, during and after the implementation of the cloud. Amazon AWS or similar offerings have limited consulting, monitoring or support services packaged with the offerings and one has to hire a third-party to get these services – for instance, RightScale for AWS.
Recognizing this fact, IBM announced the Cloud certification program earlier this week to certifiy cloud offerings and the consultants who provide cloud solutions. http://www.serverwatch.com/news/article.php/37872…
In addition, enterprises will be concerned about the implications of using cloud computing on Sarbanes-Oaxley and similar regulatory requirements before going down that path. I believe that it will be mid-size companies, who don't already own their data centers, who will embrace the cloud as a cost-cutting measure before the big guys jump in. The big guys have their private computing clouds in their data centers and will be the last to change.
November 28th, 2008 at 7:13 am
Not exactly on point, but I thought you might be interested in this link to Rands In Repose http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2008/11/25/….