Subscribe via e-mail: You might have noticed that I’ve blogged more often about cloud computing lately, especially about Amazon’s AWS. This is not just because I have moved 4sysops to EC2. It is more the other way around. I have moved 4sysops to the cloud because I want to get more experience with cloud computing. I must admit that I got somehow hooked on EC2 since I played with it the AWS Management Console a while back.
On the other hand, it is possible that I have been taken by just another hype. According to Gartner’s Hype Cycle cloud computing is now at the top of the hype curve. It is interesting to note that it shares this position with eBook readers which is the other topic that fascinates me for quite a while. (Just ordered the new Kindle International.) So you see I am prone to fall for all kinds of new technologies which are sometimes just hypes.
I am running this poll to get an idea of how 4sysops readers think about this topic. The outcome of this poll will have an influence on future articles I will write for 4sysops. I can’t promise that I will completely stop writing about cloud computing even if most 4sysops readers are already bored by this topic. Sometimes I just can’t stop myself. (This is where all those rants against Apple, the CLI and Vista bashers come from.) However, if there is a certain interest, you will find more stuff about cloud computing, in particular about Amazon’ cloud, on this blog. I might also dive a into Microsoft’s Azure once it is publicly available. But I have to play with it first before I can tell if it really interests me.
Independently of its significance for 4sysops, the outcome of this poll is certainly of general interest. Research institutions usually only ask CEOs and CIOs about such topics. However, in the end, it often depends on the opinion of IT pros if something is really doable or just another hype pushed by analysts and journalists. Therefore, I think it is quite interesting to know what you think about cloud computing.
Please note that you can select more than one answer in this poll. Of course, you can also share a more differentiated opinion in a comment below.
Cloud Computing, give me a break. They tried in the late 90′s, back then is was all hyped up as “Software as a Service”. It failed miserably. Now they have come back in the late 2000′s, this time calling it “In the Cloud”.
I think cloud computing and SAS are two very different things. SAS is a business model while cloud computing is a new technology. For instance, you can have a private cloud in your organization in which case you don’t need a service provider. Also, you can be a SAS provider without using cloud technology. For example, conventional web hosting providers usually don’t use cloud technology.
Kind of a bad poll – we have 2 apps in the “cloud”, but I wouldn’t call that significant compared to the hundreds we have in house nor would it be accurate to say we endorse it or love it because we do use “cloud” apps. It is nothing more than one more tool/way to solve a problem or set of problems. It does not do anything along the lines of what the marketing folks would have you believe – it does not often save money, it does not often have the same flexibility or functionality, and it is not the end all, be all solution for all of IT. It is simply another way of doing things and it may or may not be the best of the possible solutions to a given problem based on the specific situation. To call it anything else is tremendously misleading. It is still an app or computer and it does nothing to fundamentally revolutionize what is being done or has been done in the on-premise model. It is simply another tool in the box.
Thanks for your series Michael. I don’t believe the technology is mature enough in terms of costs, communications networks and competition to really make an impact which is probably true of how the majority of technologies start their life. There is another side element that might make a good topic for you or debate amongst fellow 4sysops to thrash out and that is does cloud computing pose a danger to peoples jobs in IT in which case it also has to fight against IT specialists for adoption.
Bill, this poll is not really about the importance of cloud computing in today’s corporate networks. I am just interested to know who has already experience with cloud computing. As to your critique of cloud computing, I think your claims are much too general. If cloud computing saves money or not depends very much on the concrete cloud service and also on the organization’s environment. I agree that cloud computing is just another tool in the box. And the point about every new tool is that it simplifies our work and therefore also saves money.
moiecoute, you are absolutely right. Cloud computing is just at the beginning and I believe that we will see a very fast development in the coming years. I also think that it is now the right time for every IT pro to get acquainted with cloud computing even though many services are not yet mature enough to replace on-premise solutions. I think you mentioned an important reason why many IT pros are skeptical about cloud computing. In my view, it is highly unlikely that cloud computing or SaS will render IT pros jobless. This is where IT differs from other fields. New technologies in IT have always created new jobs. I might post something about this topic in the near future.