"Cloud Computing" is the next big technological wave to crash upon the shores of commerce and industry. Giant companies like Microsoft, IBM, Amazon.com, Google, Salesforce.com, etc., are venturing into the foray to grab a piece of the "Software as a Service" (SaaS) marketplace. However, like any emerging industry, questions are being raised as to how much "rope" should be extended to the industry to allow for innovation and product improvements, but also maintain some sort of quality assurance controls. Ironically, IBM has been the main driving force in promoting the "Open Cloud Manifesto" (mostly because some think that it would expand their suite of products/services). The premise of the Manifesto is that customers should be allowed to move their data and applications from one provider to the next, easily and efficiently, through an "open" set of standards that is not controlled by one company. With out a doubt, the Manifesto has created quite the storm of controversy, and just getting to some sort of industry-wide agreement on what standards should be in place, may be a deal-breaker.
However, some expert analysts state that venturing into the cloud computing world would be an impractical cost/benefit investment, especially if the entity is a large corporation (over $500 million in revenue). McKinsey & Co. assert that trying to adopt the cloud model by a large corporation would more than double the cost of running its own IT infrastructure, and that actually owning the hardware is just as cost effective for most corporations, when the depreciation writeoffs for tax-purposes are included. And even if that doesn’t make a large company stop an think about whether to invest in cloud computing, software maintenance and help desk support are still labor intensive expenses, regardless of where it is hosted. Instead, McKinsey & Co. suggest that corporate IT managers, for large corporations, should focus on "virtualization" so that the corporate servers are allowed to juggle more software tasks, and increase utilization, thus reducing capital and energy costs.
McKinsey & Co. analysts may have a point, but there are plenty of "large" corporations out in the market who are using cloud computing services – Glaxo SmithKline (GSK), for example, uses Microsofts cloud computing format which the Redmond, WA, software-maker proudly announces that if GSK can use its online services than anyone in the world can. Thus, a contradiction in idealogy and perception. The debate will rage on as to whether or not cloud computing can be an adequate solution for enterprise businesses.
To read more about this topic, please click here: When Cloud Computing Doesn’t Make Sense (NYT); and Clash of the Clouds (The Economist); Microsoft Pumps Cloud, Trumps Google with GSK