Today’s Wild Business Idea: Dump Your Traditional Data Center
August 24, 2008
Dion Hinchcliffe’s “Are We Ready to Declare the “Time of Death” for the Enterprise Data Center” here. Mr. Hinchcliffe uses the Amazon Elastic Block Store service as hook for this question that stopped me in my tracks. I just submitted my KMWorld column on this subject, and I wanted to see if my analysis matched the ZDNet take on cloud computing. The question is, “Can you trust cloud computing with your enterprise data?” Mr. Hinchcliffe includes a nifty illustration which I am reluctant to reproduce. The diagram shows the difference between the traditional data center and the cloud services. It also provides some bullet points to help you recognize the difference between a server sitting in your server room or at your service provider and a service that is not sitting in one of those locations. 😉 I usually tell by the heat and noise, however.
The most interesting section in this write up includes the statement:
But it’s fairly clear that the classical multi-hundred thousand square foot proprietary data center is a dinosaur of another age, like mainframes are for most organizations today.
You will have to work hard to find a better statement of the received wisdom on this point.
My column takes a different line of attack. Like the addled goose I am, I pick out what I consider the weak links in the argument and probe that point. I can’t reproduce the column; otherwise, my publisher will not mail me the really big check that I get for my golden prose. I can identify the a simple check list to help you decide if cloud computing is for you.
First, if you have little to lose, cloud computing makes sense. If the pictures or other ephemera disappear , it’s a heart ache, but you have lost memories, not your money, your freedom, or your business one hopes.
Second, if you are operating on a leash with one end around your throat and the other in the hands of a venture capital firm, law enforcement, or a client with a penchant for crushing worms who fumble a project, you will use cloud computing under carefully controlled circumstances.
Third, you want to experiment and don’t place much value on the test set, go for it.
Fourth, it’s a school project, a research exercise, or a competitive analysis, cloud computing is ideal.
Fifth, you don’t know about security, reliability, service level agreements, etc., sign up now. You may not get bitten, and you will learn a great deal.
My knock against cloud computing is focused on risk. If the risk is acceptable, cloud computing may be the greatest thing since sliced bread. If you are risk averse, you will want to engineer a solution so there can be some fuzzy cloudiness involved, but there’s a great deal of other engineering to match the dream with the risk inherent in a cloudy environment. Everybody may be doing it, but some situations are not for “everybody”.
Stephen Arnold, August 24, 2008
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