If you have a Google search running on "Cloud Computing" as I do, you will find yourself inundated every day with announcements from companies about new cloud computing services.  From personal experience, I know that creating and operating a viable cloud service is not easy, and requires both technical expertise and experience.  So as a result I think many of these announcements are just hype.  Network World's pundits seem to think so as well, and are giving the hype a sharp tongue-lashing.

While I think the hype around Cloud is bad for customers, it's also bad for vendors because it both creates unrealistic expectations among customers as well as obscuring which vendors can provide the value customers are looking for.  If everyone is "cloud washing" their non-cloud technology, then how can a realistic assessment be be made of it?  And how can customers benefit from the underlying technology revolution that makes Cloud possible?

A great place to start is with a definition of Cloud Computing that eliminates the "cloud-washers".  The Federal Government has reasonably defined Infrastructure-as-a-Service Cloud computing, and their definition can be found in another of my blog articles.

However, this definition doesn't address the main reason that Cloud is so interesting to vendors and customers alike: can it augment or replace the corporate data center while offering pay-as-you-go operations cost savings and reducing headcount and required skillset?

Answering this question still falls into the hands of the buyer, for whom I propose the following questions about potential cloud vendors, though many customers will already have these questions available from building their own infrastructure:

1) Does the cloud achieve the CPU, I/O, and storage performance necessary to run my applications?
2) How does the cloud infrastructure guarantee reliability by design and how much reliability can I expect (as opposed to being promised)?
3) Will I understand the underlying architecture of the cloud well enough to optimize/tune and secure my applications?
4) Is security equivalent to that which I have deployed for my applications?
5) Is the controllability and usage accounting capable of supporting my budgeting process?
6) Do I trust the cloud vendor as much as I'd trust my own IT department?
7) Is there adequate support for any regulatory compliance activities that I wish to undertake?
 
There are probably more, but these seem to be the ones that enterprises ask me over and over.  I think I have good answers to some but not all of them, so I know my work - and that of other cloud vendors - is cut out for me to stand clear of the hype, which seems to float to new heights every day.

I'm a little surprised that I'm writing this, and not some representative of the IT buying community - or perhaps I've missed it with my saved searches.  In any case, I welcome your comments.

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