Comments on: Cloud Computing Is a Tool, Not a Strategy

By: Hybridizing DR for the Cloud: Concerns — Dave Graham's Weblog

Hybridizing DR for the Cloud: Concerns — Dave Graham's Weblog — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 17:43:11 +0000

[...] Cloud Computing Is a Tool, Not a Strategy (gigaom.com) [...]

By: Business sees value in the Cloud; yet security remains a concern | CloudAve

Business sees value in the Cloud; yet security remains a concern | CloudAve — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 11:39:34 +0000

[...] Cloud Computing Is a Tool, Not a Strategy (gigaom.com) [...]

By: Service-Oriented Architecture mobile edition

Service-Oriented Architecture mobile edition — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 15:32:58 +0000

[...] exciting stuff if you ask me. Stacey also provides follow-up perspectives on HP’s presentations here and here. Some interesting takeaways: “HP thinks IT will be delivered as a service by thousands of [...]

By: Links for Feb 22 2009 | Eric D. Brown - Technology, Strategy, People & Projects

Mon, 23 Feb 2009 01:44:09 +0000

[...] Cloud Computing Is a Tool, Not a Strategy by Stacey Higginbotham on GigaOm [...]

By: JP Morgenthal

JP Morgenthal — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 22:04:16 +0000

Tool. Strategy. Incorrect abstraction. Cloud Computing is a business model and technology architecture. It’s an ROI to the penny counters and it’s means to address scalability, disaster recovery and other key IT management issues for IT Management. The question is which definition will reign supreme at the end of the hype cycle?

By: HP Not So Sure About EC2

HP Not So Sure About EC2 — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 21:21:56 +0000

[...] 2: Cloud Computing Is a Tool, Not a Strategy [...]

By: David

David — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 20:04:58 +0000

I think what troubles HP and other hardware vendors is the scalability that distributed computing provides. The price of the bigger and bigger boxes (and thus the margin on them) are increasing exponentially. So building high performance, fault tolerant systems out of commodity PCs is really a big danger for them.

The article itself is clever. HP is pretty late in trying to jump into the boat. The best it can do is to try to slow the process and hope it can find a place in the new world of cost effective computing.

The argument of SLAs, vendor-lock-in and availability guarantees are valid IMHO, but I’m pretty sure it will be solved soon.

BR, David

By: Michael Sheehan

Michael Sheehan — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 17:33:39 +0000

Personally, I think that Cloud Computing is BOTH a tool AND a strategy (much like a few others who have replied to this post). When a company is thinking about IT strategies, you can go with the traditional datacenter one or with a cloudcenter one, or even a hybrid model. They are not, however, interchangeable. There are efficiencies that are distinct to each. In my mind, a strategy is a collection of “tools” (not a great word in my mind) and “actions” (decisions on how to use the “tools”). Tools can be hardware, software, networking components, etc. Alone, tools are ineffective and useless, serving only singular purposes. As a “strategy”, these tools are coupled together in the “proper” way to a larger whole, hence the word “toolset”.

When you architect a strategy or solution, you need to be sure that you choose the correct one. You cannot simply think that if it works within a traditional datacenter, that it will work entirely the same way in a cloudcenter. You must design for the efficiency and strengths of both, depending on which one you choose.

Put together multiple toolsets in an intelligent manner and then you have a strategy.

Just my 2 cents.

Thanks,
Michael Sheehan
Technology Evangelist for GoGrid – http://www.gogrid.com

By: Matt

Matt — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 15:47:26 +0000

Considering you say that there’s a lack of portability a paragraph later, I’m not sure what this means: “But thanks to data exchange standards like XML, he said via chat during the webinar, interoperability is in better shape now.”

By: ivdesk

ivdesk — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 03:43:58 +0000

Nice post. I think HP’s missing the boat my saying it’s not strategic and an overall strategy. I think that moving IT to the cloud can have a dramatic effect on not only the service levels but also the cost structures and really continue to move IT costs into a variable environment. Technologies are really available to deliver solutions in the cloud for many different sized companies. My take is that picking the “simple” services (email, remote backup, video conf, storage) is a cop out and missing the boat completely.

My take: Move it all to the cloud and leverage the existing Virtual Server solutions, Virtualization of Applications, Published Applications and Desktops, SANs, and deliver on the promise. We’ve been doing this for years based on existing proven technologies from simple Terminal Server desktops to publishing applications out of the cloud. It doesn’t matter what platform, it can be done with extremely high success and SLAs.

Thanks,
Bill

IVDesk.Wordpress.com
http://www.ivdesk.com