A long-time networking/security colleague recently asked me
an interesting question. Apparently he’s been getting some pushback from
enterprises on cloud computing topics and wanted to know if I had been seeing
the same thing. To summarize my original, somewhat rambling response: (a) now
that you mention it, yes, I’ve been hearing some
of this too, and (b) when you think about it, this reaction is not particularly
surprising.
Let’s be clear, everything I’m talking about here is
anecdotal. I don’t have any meaningful statistics I can share (at least not
yet); I haven’t been actively inquiring about this topic (until now). But that
doesn’t change the fact that, in passing, more than a handful of people have signaled
their disillusionment (to borrow from Gartner) with most things cloud.
As for this making sense, I think there’s more to it than
the cloud market simply being at a certain point in the hype cycle. In all its
full-blown glory, cloud computing is astoundingly complex. Moreover, cloud
technologies and services are still very much in flux. Consequently, I think
the issue is that people understand that the transformation to a highly dynamic
computing environment featuring everything cloud is going to take a long time – and they just don’t want to
hear about it for that bloody long!
Does this mean you should pull your cloud-themed marketing
campaign for next quarter? No way. But you may want to temper it a bit – or at
least do or say something different than everyone else. Perhaps focus more on
practically achievable near-term results instead of pie-in-the-sky vision. Good
advice in any case. In the meanwhile, let me know what you’re hearing when it
comes to cloud computing. Are enterprises tired of hearing about it already?
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