4 things that are killing cloud computing

Surprisingly, both cloud proponents and cloud providers are among those damaging the cloud's prospects for success

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As I talk to people about cloud computing, it's interesting to see two major camps: One camp is composed of those who consider cloud computing to be the second coming of IT, and thus demand that you bow down to Google App Engine and Amazon EC2. The other camp includes those who see cloud computing as evil, a bubble, or a passing fad. (Very few people form the third camp: those who look at cloud computing the way everyone should look at cloud computing, namely as architectural options that can improve efficiencies and lower costs.)

In an ironic twist, there are forces out there, in both the pro and con camps, hurting the potential value of cloud computing -- potentially to the point of killing cloud computing. They are:

 

• Overhyped Google Gmail outages
• The "cloud everything" crowd
• The "cloud is evil" crowd
• The cloud providers themselves

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Gmail outages hype
The issue around the Gmail outages, including the one that occurred last week, is not the outages themselves but the fact that every pundit with a blog account calls for the end of cloud computing because Gmail tanked for a few hours. Let's get this straight: E-mail systems go down, whether on-premise or cloud-delivered, and if you think you're going to ever get 100 percent uptime, you're dreaming. The uptime record for Gmail is more impressive than that of most enterprise e-mail systems. Also, Gmail is free, where enterprise e-mail systems cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in software, hardware, and salaries for those charged with maintaining them.