Cloud Computing has had its fair share of issues with regards to data security and end user control.Considering all of these and significant investments that IT firms are betting on,do you think its a bubble or would it become the de-facto way for enterprise IT in the future (Not referring to the private on-premise cloud but the public cloud)

Sumesh,

The public "cloud" has been and still remains to be the competitive great equalizer. I remember when [if] you wanted to launch an application as a service, you started out by renting a 10x10 cage at Exodus, then leasing servers from Compaq, and then the laundry list of ala carte selections began; monitoring, backup, redundant power, etc. and the cost became to prohibitive, so you contemplated a different software architecture, like an on-premise setup.exe approach, but then you realized that enterprise software requires professional services, training, a formal release process and the support overhead would never let you get off the ground; so instead you got a marketing team to buy into your service and they built great collateral and you and they went out and got VC money, and then you ran back to Exodus and Compaq and bought more than you needed, and instead of writing the code yourself, you hired more developers ignoring the mythical man month, so people sat around doing nothing, and getting paid, need I continue....Today's cloud providers allow anyone to get all that and more, with no upfront costs and pay by the drink, with a few clicks. So I can literally compete with Salesforce.com (if I chose to...) from the comfort of my living room, writing code, promoting it to a secure, elastic, bandwidth on demand, etc. server farm, fully managed, in the cloud – it’s all up to me.

What most people miss is that architecture is still architecture whether it’s a data center in your company or across a number of cloud providers. When you design and build anything you have to architect it well first. And when deciding to use a public cloud provider you have to review the security, decide what you need, what options are available from who, where, how, etc. I find that there is no one provider that has everything you need, you may use DNS services from here, virtual iron from there, and file based and database based storage from someplace else. You can architect to an SLA, to performance, to security or costs. The risk is all up to you. But once you do it, select a development platform and stick to a plan – it all just works!

Now, IMHO what is going to slow down cloud adoption, or maybe retard it all together to the point of going backwards is not security or even risk, it’s pricing. It's already going the wrong way. Take for example Carbonite and Mozy, both have raised prices, for the same level of service. This makes no sense. Economics 101, the cost of storage continues to go down, in the economy since 2007 people costs have been re-adjusted, so their people have to be less, and they are doing well and obtaining net new customers and renewals, so their pricing should be going down, not up! They are all shooting themselves in the foot and causing consumers to take a pause. It’s really telling, when the 1TB drive at Best Buy, becomes the alternative to a CDP cloud based solution from Carbonite because of price. Cloud pricing has to be a no-brainer for the consumer.

So much energy and enthusiasm starts with the entrepreneurs, not the big commercial private clouds, if public cloud based pricing gets out of control it will kill the entrepreneurs and start-ups and then we’ll lose real innovation which bubbles up, not down to the larger entities. That’s the potential demise, greed.

Good Luck,

Peter
http://www.csi1000.com

May 2011