Software Plus Services is Only Part of the Equation
Looking out at yesterday's Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) outage through his Microsoft Watch-colored glasses, my colleague Joe Wilcox views the hosted storage slip-up as a selling point for Microsoft's Software-plus-Services twist on cloud computing. The Software-plus-Services pitch goes something like this: Rather than jump into cloud-based services with both feet, organizations and individuals should pursue a blended strategy, based on traditional on-premises software, complemented by hosted services where appropriate. The Software-plus-Services strategy makes a lot of sense, and organizations investigating whether to shift vital systems from an on premises to a hosted model shouldn't allow themselves to get so caught up in cloud excitement that they overlook the relative immaturity of hosted services. With all that said, however, it's important to keep in mind that the tag line "Software-plus- Services" doesn't tell the whole story. Sitting behind that familiar and friendly word, "software," are a chain of significantly more sticky concerns. A more accurately descriptive slogan might be, "Software-plus-Hardware-plus-Power-plus-Bandwidth-plus-Real-Estate-plus-Management plus-Services." When you take into account everything that's required for a business to host its own software—particularly for a startup out to break into a market, or an established player looking to avoid being bumped out of its place—putting up with a certain amount of downtime can be viewed as a cost of staying in business.
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Comments (6)
That is if downtime is the only thing to put up with. I still don't understand how a company could trust the cloud with its data.
Posted by Shrek | July 27, 2008 10:32 PM
Hey, Shrek -- I hear you. I wonder, however, how some companies (especially those with constrained IT budgets) could trust themselves with their data...
Posted by Jason Brooks | July 29, 2008 2:25 PM
Well, if a company cannot afford the budget to meet its own IT requirements and if the cloud is a better option, then it's time for its employees to find another job.
As far as clouds go I can understand a corporate cloud like an intranet. However, I don't think the cloud everybody is talking about (such as Google's) will ever be reliable enough to be trusted with sensitive data.
Posted by Shrek | August 7, 2008 2:55 AM
Isn't the cloud just another chapter in the story of increasing abstraction in computing?
For instance, you could also say, I can't believe a company would trust some external provider to write its software. Any company that doesn't have the resources to write its own OS, web server, ERP system, what have you, is going out of business.
Commodity hardware, commodity software, commodity services -- these all make IT accessible to a larger share of businesses. They also require that businesses place some trust in their providers. If the providers prove undeserving of that trust, others will emerge to capture those dollars.
Posted by Jason Brooks | August 7, 2008 2:28 PM
No I don't think the cloud is just another chapter in the story of "increasing abstraction in computing". In my opinion "the cloud" is not really new. That's another version of mainframe type organization with the down side of having to deal with a huge and very, very complex network called the internet and a very big mainframe that is probably clustered servers.
I know that some people will claim that eventually "the cloud" will become reliable enough but based on my personal experience I cannot believe it. The Internet has become more complex because it evolved, security issues had to be addressed, limitations were reached and had to be overcome with workarounds (documented in RFCs). And all that maintaining backward compatibility. When you deal with a network that wasn't planned before hand but grew organically as the Internet did you are bound to create a monster that cannot provide the level of reliability a business needs.
As far as the examples you were providing regarding trusting an eternal provider, I make a difference between data and software. I trust a external provider when I buy a software to do my taxes but I don't trust an external provider with the data generated by that tool. Don't make me wrong I think "cloud computing" is interesting and has a lot of benefits but the cloud has to remain private (like an intranet is private).
Posted by Shrek | August 7, 2008 2:48 PM
Every organization that conducts business over the Internet sends its data through machines it does not control.
If your organization does business over the Internet with customers or external partners, then you're sending your data through machines you do not control to machines you do not control.
In any case, we're all free to store our data wherever, and run our businesses however, we choose. That is, unless/until your competitors manage to squeeze enough efficiency out of external services to force you to make a change or go out of business.
The cloud, the Internet, and (relatively speaking) all of IT, is still rather young. Things are very far from leveling off. We'll see how it all unfolds.
Posted by Jason Brooks | August 7, 2008 3:13 PM