What to do, what to do, what to do? I write about cloud computing for a living, but wonder how effective that can be.
Shall I create a 10-point list of what you need to know as you move to the cloud? Oh, there are already several out there? And they don’t tell you anything you don’t already know? Check.
Shall I talk about cloud myths and why you should destroy them? No, already wrote about that – and the only myth is that there are myths.
Shall I write a sneering piece about the superiority of the iPhone and iPad? Well, it turns out plenty of people specialize in this. Or maybe take the contrarian view that Android will rule in the long run? Hmm, there are many writers taking this view as well.
Maybe I’ll write one of those Hitler parrody videos. Nah, I’m just not that funny, and find Hitler to be a delicate, even unfunny, topic.
What to do, what to do, what to do? I know, how about a piece that claims the cloud is the least important thing about cloud computing? Because I believe this to be true.
You know, “Does Cloud Matter?”
Cloud computing is routinely described as transformational (something of which I’m guilty, too). It already exists in semi-massive amounts, assuming its heavy background use by the big email hosts (yahoo, google, msn, even aol), the big online stores (amazon, ebay, and maybe every department store and speciality merchant in the world today), and the big social sites (especially facebook). It’s grown enough in just a few years to support $4 billion in annual VMware revenue, and has created a nice-sized industry (witness Cloud Expo exhibitors, for example).
But as the line in the movie goes, “it’s just a man on a horse.” Cloud is not a new paradigm so much as a (vastly) expanded use of our networks, including the Internet. I remember, as the Barcelona Olympics opened in 1992, talking with writer and analyst friends of mine about how 90% of the PCs in the United States were still not networked – and the US was the technology-adoption leader in those days.
Two decades later, as the London Olympics loom, every device you use might be hooked up to at three or four networks (Internet, LAN, bluetooth, and telco). But you still as if there aren’t enough hours in the day, you aren’t really better informed about the important stuff (how many people had radios in the office back when), and the real, analog arrow fired over the Barcelona cauldron in 1992 to light the Olympic torch will always be the coolest opening ever.
Fundamentally speaking, the cloud changes nothing. The Internet changed nothing. But if you’re not up to speed and doing everything you can to get your private/public/hybrid strategy straight, your PaaS in place, and the rest of your XaaS plan designed if not deployed, then you’ll need to read some of those “10-point” articles I so baldly dismissed earlier.
Because if for no other reasons than keeping up with the Jones’s, cloud matters.