People say: Cloud computing a major transformation of the IT industry or just another overhyped trend?

Cloud computing is all the rage. The problem is that everyone seems to have a different definition 😉

Further to discussion of this topic I’d like to quote some interesting opinions of LinkedIn members who left their comments to the question in the title of this post.

“It’s a major trend but not a transformation, because a fundamental flaw in how IT is managed has not been addressed. We are still relying on IT teams to interpret and act on an ever-expanding, real time flood of data, and expect them to make the “right” decisions about how to plan, build, and operate the environment.

Cloud computing will bring this problem to the forefront because these decisions will need to be made both accurately  and  in real time in order to meet the expected service levels of an always on, always available cloud.

Managing these environments based on static rules, thresholds, and constraints (like IT has been managed for the last 20 years) will not work because of their dynamic nature. Unless we want to have huge clouds that are massively over provisioned to work around it – which would defeat the whole purpose (and kill the margins of the cloud providers) :)”

John Ganno
Product Marketing and Business Development at VMTurbo

“Cloud computing is another example of the pendulum effect of technology. From as far back as the 50’s and 60’s with the advent of Mainframe computing, the end user would have nothing more than a dumb terminal at their desk and everything, from storage to processing, was done on the centralized Mainframe.

Then, industry experts thought it would make more sense to have the computing power be more distributed, more in the hands of the user, and the personal computer revolution began.

Now, more and more, products such as netbooks/net-tops and ultra mobile devices like the iPad and others are starting to bear more resemblance to the “dumb terminals” of old than their PC predecessors. Sporting features like minimal processing power and memory, they become increasingly reliant on “cloud” services for basic functions and applications that used to be hosted locally.

Moving further into the future, as network speeds increase and latency becomes less of an issue, I can see more of these ultra cheap, ultra portable devices becoming popular with the general public.”

Matthew Reiner
Technology Analyst

“In my view, cloud computing is just a new name for something that has been around a long time. Anyone that has a Hotmail or Gmail or Yahoo email account is already using cloud computing. The same goes for Amazon and eBay. At the core, cloud computing is just storing your data on a remote server rather than you own computer. What has changed is that now entire applications, such as Salesforce, can be run in the cloud. The biggest challenge I see for cloud computing is data security. Someone once asked Willie Horton why he robbed banks and his reply was “that’s where the money is”. So I’m sure that the cyber thieves will be targeting data centers because…that’s where the data is”

Steve Walker
Senior PeopleSoft Consultant at CedarCrestone

“I think Cloud computing must be taken under consideration for SMB, ehre the cost and leverage of holding an DataCenter is out of scope, for large enterprises, software and hardware providers are releasing ways of Upgrading infrastructure lowering cost and offering benefits like redundancy and Private Cloud making a robust platform. The Security issues are a concern and must not be taken for granted, I also comply with preveous answer where stated that Cloud services have been around for a long time but recently due to the continues strive to offer innovative ways of improvements make it up to the top… we will see how it goes…”

Oswaldo Bello
Information Security Assistant Manager

“At IMS many of our customers are realizing the value of the cloud. Simply put; reduced cost for server infrastructure allowing the company to focus on their core competencies. It is not for every application or every company, but if you manage a P&L in an IT department it’s worth a look. As for security, there are many ways to achieve this and I would caution against looking at the cloud as one simplistic giant leap at once.

Consider the fact that there are private clouds that offer you the ability to have the same security you’d pay for in any datacenter. After all clouds are run from data centers right?

If you need more convincing take a look at how much the government is spending by 2013. It’s definitely in the 10s of billions. That makes it real!”

James Williams
Technology Entrepreneur

And what are your thoughts on this topic? You’re welcome to leave your comments.