Cloud Control
September 26th, 2008
Okay, the ubiquitous use of the term ‘cloud’ or ‘cloud computing’ is already getting annoying. It seems practically every other marketing offer, industry analyst and sales exec is adopting this nebulous term as if it has specific meaning to them. Very quickly this is squeezing the last drop out of what meaning there was to the term. I am drenched in a deluge of offers and admonitions to get ‘into the cloud’. It’s enough to make you wish for a cloudless day. Already the backlash has begun - just search on ‘cloud computing’ to see the griping.
The silver lining? However the term is used, business models that allow you to subscribe to software are of great benefit to us, the consumer. For ‘buy’ decisions, the more clever offerings that appear which allow me to rent or subscribe to a solution which is delivered through the web without me having to purchase, deploy, support and maintain the infrastructure, the better. For ‘build’ decisions, the more enterprise class open source that comes on the market, similarly the better for us. In tough economic times, if I can lower technology spend by ratcheting down usage, I’ll be thankful for this inclement weather.
