And that’s a very big deal. Cloud vendors are worried more about data replication and less on resiliency of the software (Think OpenStack, CloudStack, and others).

Time lost and especially data compromise will be enough to doubt the minds of large enterprise executives.

The “Cloud” is just a fancy new way to say “Internet”. You might as well just send all your confidential company data straight to China and save their hackers some work, because we all know it’s going to end up there anyway.

Nice try Google, but no thanks!

There is no question in my mind as to who will win this time around, same as last time. People should look at it in two ways. First there’s a nice opportunity forming for migrating companies into the cloud, and you can focus on that. Certainly lots of cloud migrations will happen in the near future.

The huge opportunity, of course, is to found the company that will be to Google what Microsoft was to IBM. It will be a lot easier if you do it while everybody still has windows laptops.

Specialized custom applications versus generic vendor-controlled huge applications. When it comes to cost-saving generic solutions the cloud beat the cloud. When it comes to adapting to changing circumstances, small, custom, distributed applications will, once again, eat the cloud alive.

To delete, delete the 20 bytes that form the password. The data is gone, and nobody, not google, not amazon, no CA judge, not barack obama himself can order it restored.

Happened to me, and took me 3 weeks to get back one blog; I had two disappear.

Don’t get me wrong I concur with your arguments 100%.

The Cloud, the newest sexy term for distributed resources local or remote. What gets better attention from say a prospect or even from your banker, SaaS or Cloud?

Just helped a peer with a business loan application and business plan summary, and initially used SaaS in their application and business plan summary, was turned down. Reworked both using Cloud, got the loan and then some.

No matter the location, local or Cloud, all the same ancillary services are still in play, e.g. continuity, data loss prevention, disaster recovery, compliance and e-discovery liabilities, and so forth.

The Cloud helps reduce the hardware capital costs, although the software services are still in play, depending on the services used and the features available.

Electronically stored information (ESI) is subject to inspection from law enforcement and governmental agencies, with the proper warrant and subpoena. Fact of life.

As a former webhost/ISP, we had law enforcement requests all the time, most would just walk-in and ask for it, l like it was free for the taking. Sent many out the door, until they produced the proper paperwork.

All that Google, Amazon, MS, etc, have done is rebadge an old concept and introduce a whole new range of single points of failure across the ultimate cloud – the Internet. If I put an application in one Telco data centre and then in another so they are ‘hot synced’ then if one Telco goes down I am still there. If both go down then we are ALL down.

I agree with many of the other comments. Privacy is a BIG concern and the additional threat to data in US data centres from the Patriot Act is not an idle one. These companies think they are going to become the world’s ‘utility’ as regards information services. Given that information increasingly defines an organisation and helps underpin its value you have to ask the question. Would you trust gigs of sensitive commercial data – oil well analysis, contract pricing information, ground breaking research information, etc, to these people? I might take services that have minimal commercial and operational risk – even email has issues given the wide range of documents that get embedded within the system.

When Mr. Girouard’s company becomes large enough, you also will become more demanding on your suppliers and won’t accept anonymouity. In the name of cost reduction.

I think this would be a better article had you addressed the cost of the cloud vs more traditional approach. For somone who does not need elasticity, but who has predictable computing and storage needs the cloud is typically far more expensive.

You talked about 3 insanities all three of which were red herrings in my book. The one important insanity you did not talk about was the comparatively high cost of the cloud when elasticity is not needed.