May 26th, 2009
10 things you still have to worry about until cloud computing becomes reality
Helpstream’s Bob Warfield unveiled 10 things that don’t matter anymore given the adoption of cloud computing. In theory, Warfield is right. The key word: Theory. Given that only 3 percent of enterprises have adopted cloud computing the rest of you need to worry.
Warfield riffs that you just don’t need to worry about the following things in the cloud:
- De-duping and backup;
- Server power consumption;
- Little iron vs. big iron;
- MIPs;
- Bandwidth costs;
- Load balancing;
- Hardware monitoring;
- Creating redundant data center;
- Configuring complex software;
- Engineering time spent on keeping the lights on.
For Warfield, these worries don’t exist anymore since his company, Helpstream, runs on Amazon Web Services (here’s the blueprint).
Here’s the reality for the rest of you:
Only 5 percent of enterprises have implemented cloud computing and 3 percent plan to use it in the next 12 months. Assuming that 8 percent of those enterprises move their entire infrastructure the cloud they can live a worry free life like Warfield.
The point: Let’s not get too carried away with cloud computing hype. There are the first movers and then the reality the rest of you face. Simply put, a larger percentage of enterprises won’t have to worry about mundane tasks in the future, but it’s not likely to approach 50 percent in the next 10 years. Why? It’s hard to move the petabytes over to the cloud. Amazon is still using a fancy means of Sneakernet to move enterprises to the cloud. Now that’s reality.
Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of ZDNet and Editorial Director of ZDNet sister site TechRepublic. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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