“Why Cloud?” vs “What’s Next For Cloud?”

If 2012 was the year that cloud really came into itself as a fully fledged concept, how has 2013 shaped up?

Posted taken from GATHERING CLOUDS, MAY 15, 2013 05:45 AM EDT, Cloud Computing Jurnal

We all talk about cloud differently, but is there a way we should be speaking about this tech?

Cloud computing is now a widely reported, if not accepted, IT movement that, depending on who you talk to, has changed or is changing the way businesses utilize infrastructure.

The question remains, however, that if 2012 was the year that cloud really came into itself as a fully fledged concept, how has 2013 shaped up? As we reach the near midpoint of the year, its hard not to reflect on whether the conversation around cloud computing has evolved to the point that we are no longer talking about the benefits of the service itself, but whether what the service enables a business to do is much different than what had previously been possible.

Looking at the headlines on GigaOm, Techcrunch, Venturebeat, and other outlets, the reporting seems to be focused more on what cloud companies are doing from an M&A standpoint than on the technology or its value to businesses generally. Sure, there are explorations of OpenStack, but those reports seem to be focused on whether anyone actually cares or uses the platform.



Gathering Clouds constant favorite David Linthicum delves into the challenges and thinking that govern cloud strategy, as do one-off thought leaders here and there. But where is the conversation around cloud actually focused?

For the most part, we see the conversation around cloud as evolving past how the technology works. Many of the major thought leaders in the space talk about cloud in terms of what people do through it – not what cloud actually does.

This, though, presents a leap beyond  understanding how to get to those positive outcomes. Believe us – cloud should be talked about in terms of what it does for a business and what a business can do through cloud. But without the correct framing of what the technology offers as a platform for innovation its hard to make those jumps.

Cloud is still developing, but as it becomes more the norm for how IT functions, there is more reason (not less) to explore how to think about the technology from an implementational standpoint. And we’ll keep providing those perspectives.