Richard Stallman's recent characertization of the impending Google Chrome OS as "careless computing" brings the careless use of the term "cloud computing" into sharp relief. Stallman says that the term "is devoid of substantive meaning," and thereby prone to uses that are less than un-evil.
I agree with his sentiment but would argue that the opposite is true: there is too much substantive meaning in the term "cloud computing." It is an umbrella term that covers everything from free email and Facebook to software applications delivered from the sky to the very serious business of enterprise-grade resource consolidation and provisioning. The end result of this: Consumer Cloud is killing Enterprise Cloud.
A Scrutable Term
Cloud computing is the first non-inscrutable IT term I can remember. It doesn't conjure up the sheer geekiness of SOA, Ajax, object-oriented programming, the Java/Javascript confusion, the PHP/Perl/Python triplets, RAID, SATA, LANs, or even the minor shoptalk inherent in terms like USB or Flash drive.
"The Internet is the Cloud, and Cloud Computing comes from the Internet" is all you have to say. Your average 6-year-old or Senator can understand it. You might even be able to teach it to goldfish or Dogs Watching TV.
Therein lies the problem. It's mildly annoying when the term is appropriated by every technology company on the planet to mean precisely what that company has been doing for years. For example, I was talking to a software CEO the other night whose company really does offer Cloud Computing, and asked him about his recent appearance at a Cloud event in Asia. "I was really annoyed by many of my fellow presenters, who just use the term 'Cloud Computing' to describe whatever it is they do," he said.
Well, we should be used to that now, whether we're being sold the old Lotus Notes as new cloud computing, or a big local data center as "cloud in a box," or dumbed-down, decades old desktop apps as Office365.
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Source: sys-con.com
By: Roger Strukhoff
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