I spent several years living in the Northwest, having moved there when I was in my mid-teens with my family. As it turns out, I became increasingly unhappy and negative during the time I lived there, but didn’t understand why. Thirteen years later, I moved to Southern California and slowly became a much happier person. The reason? Sunshine. I spent more than a decade in a depression because, unknown to me at the time, I am solar-powered, yet I lived in an area deprived of sunshine for most of the year.
I still live here in Southern California, but from an IT standpoint, I am as depressed and miserable as never before. The reason? Clouds. The entire IT industry is rabid about pushing the increasingly ridiculous “cloud computing” fervor, spinning off every possible facet of the industry as some form of “cloud”. Every day I receive a barrage of e-mails telling me that I must be selling cloud services to my customers. Every vendor producing every product imaginable is re-branding their products as some sort of cloud product or service. It is my intent here to part the clouds enough for some light to shine through on the subject.
First off, “the cloud” is NOT NEW. The very first time I learned of it was when I saw my very first Visio drawing of a WAN (Wide Area Network, or a network that connects a network at one site with a network at another site, such as a head office connection to a remote office). The link between the two locations, represented on the diagram as a cloud, was metaphorically used to represent the Internet.
“Cloud computing” is NOT NEW, although the term is. Think about it: Basically, any computing that you do via the Internet is cloud computing, much like my writing of this blog, and your reading of it. Sending an e-mail can even be considered cloud computing. Definitely nothing new about that.
What IS new, is the maddening fervor over the concept of SaaS (Software as a Service) and computing as a service. An example of SaaS may be software such as an anti-virus client installed on all your business computers, but managed by a hosted service accessible via a web page. Computing as a service is using a remote computer or service across the Internet, in lieu of owning and using that computer or service locally. Neither of these concepts are new, but the IT industry wants you to feel that it is. And, what is worse, they want you to feel that you absolutely must have this “new” technology.
As a business owner, you need to look past the hype (which is difficult here because of all the clouds…sorry…I couldn’t resist that vain attempt at wit) and ask yourself if you really would benefit from it.
Is it better? Probably not. It depends largely what you have today vs. what your real needs are. If your business is completely virtual, then it is the only way to go. If you have an office with really good Internet, you really should consider the advice of an IT consultant who is not all ‘caught up in the clouds’ before you decide to make any radical I.T. changes.
Is it cheaper? Probably not. There may be some benefits to having these services part of your monthly operating costs, in lieu of capital expenditures, but it is highly unlikely that it will be less expensive in the long term. A cost that is difficult to measure is how much it will cost you if it turns out that you and your employees’ productivity suffers as a result of putting services on the cloud.
Other considerations are security, trust and ownership, all subjects that must be weighed carefully before moving servers and services away from your office and to the Internet.
As for me, I will be a lot happier when the clouds clear up and I can get back to talking about Information Technology in clearer terms. But for now and the foreseeable future, I.T. is overcast.
