Predicting the Weather: Risky at Picnics, Even Riskier for Cloud Computing
June 21, 2010
I am parked in Madrid, Spain, waiting to give my talk about real time content. I am catching up with the news from the “real journalists”. I just read “Why Microsoft’s Hybrid Cloud Threatens Google.” I flashed back to 1958. In the Midwest, the local weather person was Bill Houlihan. He explained the weather each evening on the 6 pm news, and he almost always got it wrong. He started a chicken restaurant with a 30 foot plastic chicken on the roof and he got that wrong too. The restaurant failed as quickly as his weather forecasts.
Predicting the weather is risky, particularly if you are planning a picnic. Predicting the climate for cloud computing is even riskier. Remember that giant plastic chicken. That artifact is probably still intact, resting in a junk yard somewhere outside of Dunlop, Illinois.
Risk in weather prediction and plastic chickens, the associations—the Forbes article triggered these. For me the most important passage was:
Cloud computing has become a key piece of an enterprise’s IT strategy, typically used in a hybrid (cloud plus on-premise) model of computing that offers customers the best of both worlds: the ability to keep their data on-premise, while leveraging the cloud’s accelerated software development speeds and lower costs by eliminating the need to invest in ongoing on-premise hardware and software. A common example of hybrid is being able to develop applications and test them in the cloud before releasing them onto internal networks. his scenario gives Microsoft (MSFT – news – people ) a major advantage over cloud-only hosted service providers Google ( GOOG– news – people ) and Amazon, one that creates great opportunities for Microsoft’s broader partner ecosystem. Developers can use the same development tools, frameworks and execution environment for either cloud or on-premise applications. Developers can build a single application that leverages the cloud’s scalability for transactional processing while supporting the security of on-premise data storage.
This addled goose is not going to dispute the interest organizations are showing in cutting costs, increasing reliability, and gaining some breathing room from the crazy hot fixes that flood from vendors. Timesharing in its many guises is not new. Today’s economics force organizations to find ways to keep systems up and running, manage available technical staff, and get back online when one of today’s bargain basement solutions crashes.
My concern is that cloud computing comes in different flavors. Most organizations are in scramble mode. There is experimentation, parallel testing, and trials. These include experiments with the Walmart of cloud computing, roll-your-own systems, half baked solutions from the math club, and arabesques on these methods. The idea is that a specific organization knows the one best way to deal with the untenable status quo of information technology is like a weather forecast—probably incorrect. There is one added benefit to this type of prognostication about the future. The observations become today’s big plastic chicken.
Source: http://www.springchickensale.com/images/sign_chicken_sm.jpg
The idea that Microsoft has a slam dunk is interesting as an example of a marketing pitch based on a cloud computing weather prediction. No computing solution has delivered pain free information technology in my experience. Methods have upsides and downsides. My hunch is that cloud solutions will become as tough to figure out as the solution to the BP oil spill.
Opinions are to be encouraged. Predicting the weather and putting up a big plastic chicken make it easy to spot enthusiastic marketing. Will the future unfold with Microsoft dominating the hybrid cloud? I don’t know. What is clear is that lots of predators are chasing this “next big thing”. I don’t need marketing to confuse me. Do you? I just learned it will be sunny and bright in Madrid today. It is now cloudy and it looks like rain.
Stephen E Arnold, June 21, 2010
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