Frankie Goes to Cloud Computing: IBM Says, Relax Do Not Worry.
May 24, 2011
I listened to a podcast called Cloud Computing. After the “I am giving important talks” portion of the program, I learned that Amazon’s failure was pretty bad news. In fact, the containment of the failure did not work—and here’s the kicker—again. Okay, a couple of dot points on the Amazon failure line may suggest a trend. The podcast made lemonade from the Amazon lemons under a cloudy sky; specifically, hire us to work on your cloud road map. The subtext, “Our firm Blue Mountain can help heal the wound between business needs and information technology.” This theme is quite like the comments I heard from Googlers a year or so ago. The idea is that any intermediary with some expertise is sort of a problem. The idea is to disintermediate these folks so the MBAs can make better business decisions. You know what that means? Embrace cloud services like Google Docs or Amazon and the back end for mission critical services. Those annoying intermediaries can open a Subway franchise or get into consulting.
The cheerleading does not stop. I read “New Global IBM Study Confirms Cloud Computing Poised to Take Off” and experienced shock of awe. IBM is ramping up its PR activities across a range of business sectors. Does the anticipated aggressiveness of HP and Dell’s push into the enterprise, cause anxiety in IBM Land? I read New Global IBM Study Confirms Cloud Computing Poised to Take Off at Companies. My take is that IBM wants to reinforce the Googley notion that that CIOs positions have evolved from “just another job” to highly respected and valued positions.
The IBM study also showed that four out of five CIO’s see business intelligence and analytics as top priorities since abundant data is available and the strategic use of it is necessary to stay competitive. Working closely with CEOs, their visions are merging…”together, their top three focus areas are strengthening relationships with customers, developing the skills of employees and gaining insight and intelligence from data.” With cloud and business intelligence at the forefront, IBM skillfully weaves yet another PR play…yep… poised like Watson, agile like a mainframe, componentized like Lego blocks.
But is it true?
Sony’s cloud has rained on the consumer product giant’s game parade. Amazon fizzled out, making life tough for some high traffic AWS customers. Microsoft Exchange has been gasping in the rarified Microsoft cloud. Google—the ultimate in cloudy billions—announced whizzy new services as its own cloud based Blogger.com crashed. Great timing. Now what happens when a company’s mission critical data are not available?
IBM hums Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s “Relax. Don’t worry.”
Let’s assume IBM puts search in the cloud. How does a company providing support to operations in a war zone if the cloud blows away? Relax. Don’t worry.
I worry. Fail over, security, telco-inspired service level agreements, latency. So I worry. Your mileage may vary.
Stephen E Arnold, May 24, 2011
Freebie unlike IBM, Amazon, et al cloud services
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2 Responses to “Frankie Goes to Cloud Computing: IBM Says, Relax Do Not Worry.”
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Interesting commentary on the cloud. You might be interested in some of the articles we have in our own blog about cloud computing, or some of the videos we have just released on Data Security within Cloud Computing. You can find us at http://www.go-oodles.com .. Keep up the good work Stephen!!
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