Rob England recently wrote an article on cloud computing entitled, “Cloud Computing Outlook Far From Sunny.” He adamantly argues that cloud computing is a good fit for “high risk/low-capital applications like startups or small business or websites” but has a “more jaundiced view” towards the cloud for enterprise computing and existing core applications.
Yes, everyone has jumped on the cloud bandwagon and is touting “cloud” on every offering possible in hopes of grabbing a small piece of a very large pie that being eaten up as we speak, but that doesn’t mean it’s a worthless technology for the enterprise. England says, “Quite simply, the idea is impractical for legacy enterprise applications.” He claims that this “technical solution” doesn’t really solve the non-technical business problems, but actually presents more problems, introducing greater complexities to manage. He doesn’t have software as a service in mind in this article, which is good because neither do I. He is talking about the “internal grids or hosted computing or the myriad of other things that seem to get lumped into ‘The Cloud.’” Great, because I’m assuming by that, he’s including what we call “infrastructure as a service.”
The number one problem, he argues, is migrating legacy applications. It is true that some applications simply weren’t built for the cloud, which is probably why he is so skeptical of legacy migration. But many others would argue that it won't be impossible forever. Bernard Golden, author of The Case Against Cloud Computing, believes that at some point someone will develop a physical-to-cloud migration tool that can alleviate those technical migration pains. I’m with him. It’s going to happen.
But more importantly, I don’t believe that there is any reason why enterprise clients should stay away from cloud computing. There are many enterprise-level cloud options out there. And if the worry is that there will be too many pains associated with a large enterprise moving into the cloud, why don’t they opt for a full-service cloud, like those offered by managed service companies (such as BlueLock)? Then they don’t have to worry about the resources, people and time it takes to migrate everything to the cloud, their service provider will do that for them.
Yes, everyone has jumped on the cloud bandwagon and is touting “cloud” on every offering possible in hopes of grabbing a small piece of a very large pie that being eaten up as we speak, but that doesn’t mean it’s a worthless technology for the enterprise. England says, “Quite simply, the idea is impractical for legacy enterprise applications.” He claims that this “technical solution” doesn’t really solve the non-technical business problems, but actually presents more problems, introducing greater complexities to manage. He doesn’t have software as a service in mind in this article, which is good because neither do I. He is talking about the “internal grids or hosted computing or the myriad of other things that seem to get lumped into ‘The Cloud.’” Great, because I’m assuming by that, he’s including what we call “infrastructure as a service.”
The number one problem, he argues, is migrating legacy applications. It is true that some applications simply weren’t built for the cloud, which is probably why he is so skeptical of legacy migration. But many others would argue that it won't be impossible forever. Bernard Golden, author of The Case Against Cloud Computing, believes that at some point someone will develop a physical-to-cloud migration tool that can alleviate those technical migration pains. I’m with him. It’s going to happen.
But more importantly, I don’t believe that there is any reason why enterprise clients should stay away from cloud computing. There are many enterprise-level cloud options out there. And if the worry is that there will be too many pains associated with a large enterprise moving into the cloud, why don’t they opt for a full-service cloud, like those offered by managed service companies (such as BlueLock)? Then they don’t have to worry about the resources, people and time it takes to migrate everything to the cloud, their service provider will do that for them.
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