Over the past decade, I've witnessed a constant stream of IT executives and technology professionals view cloud as a threat to their careers. The business side of the organization has always been a captive customer of IT's services, and now IT feels threatened by the litany of low-cost solutions readily available in the public cloud.  

Every once in a while IT begrudgingly agrees to implement a public cloud solution.  When the do, they carefully fence it off from the rest of IT—nominally to protect the company from hackers, but equally to protect the purity of IT. Treating cloud as a standalone point solution enables them to create a self-fulfilling prophecy, using the mixed results to demonstrate that cloud just can’t hack it in the real world. 

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What happens when you have great experiences with a brand? For most people it captivates them, changes their thinking and resets their expectations.

I had the opportunity to work at Walt Disney World in the central reservations department, taking phone calls from families, travel agents and special events coordinators who all wanted to share in the trademarked Disney magic. At my core I was a salesperson, leveraging a well-structured process to guide “guests” to the highest-revenue resort rooms.

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I had the opportunity to see first hand the value of a great customer experience. People from around the globe travel thousands of miles to get a slice of the Disney “guest” experience. And somehow the theme, view or location of a hotel room most people will spend little to no waking hours in matters. It matters only because it’s part of the experience and therefore not rationalized independently.

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I’ve been a fan of software-defined networking (SDN) since my first conversation about software-based firewalls for an application deployment in 2004. Our goal was to leverage the concepts of grid computing to grow and shrink the web and application server environments in response to load, and we got the idea to throw the firewall into the mix. What made our approach possible was the ocean’s depth of software development knowledge on our team tempered by a puddle’s depth knowledge of networking.

+ Also on Network World: Survey shows growing interest in SDN, where and how companies might deploy the tech +

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What does food and beverage production have to do with cloud and the last mile?  There are several interesting parallels.

Unknown to most people, the food and beverage industry operates on razor-thin margins. As a result, producers look for any advantage they can get through automation, scale and supply chain optimization. Water is both bulky and heavy while also plentiful and cheap. As the percentage content of water increases in a food or beverage, producers are incented to remove the water during production in a way that it can be reintroduced at the point of consumption. From soups to sodas, this model keeps transportation costs low while expanding profit margins.

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Although I’ve refused to get into the “what is cloud computing” argument over the years, it doesn’t mean I don’t have a very specific definition. I believe down at the very core of cloud computing sits an airtight, inviolable principle: A cloud enables the buyer to forgo asset ownership. 

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Through my years of consulting I have come to the conclusion that technology asset ownership is an addiction and one that must be overcome through willpower, a support network and a change in habit. I’ve had to commiserate too often with CIOs despondent over the failure of private clouds that don’t meet their goals to remain silent. The best way to illustrate my point is to consider the approaches of my fictional, but all too real, clients: Accumulation, Inc. and Leverage Enterprises.

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In the early 2000's when the IT world was in the throes of ERP, CRM, SFA and ecommerce, IT infrastructure was invariably designed to support the absolute worst-case scenario. I quickly learned there were two options when launching any self-serve solution: it either flat-lines or takes off like a rocket—there is no in-between. 

The capacity planning challenge drove the development of grid computing, then virtualization, and finally cloud computing. Although with cloud we now have a way to rapidly scale up to meet increasing demand, it seems we have forgotten scaling down to conserve resources is equally important. Instead of provisioning “just in case” our worst fears came true, I find repeated examples where cloud is provisioned “just because.”

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When we talk about cloud computing, two companies immediately jump to mind: Salesforce.com and Amazon. Each represents a very different model of cloud, and each is equally valued by enterprises. Whereas Salesforce.com provides an ecosystem of out-of-the-box applications, Amazon provides the building blocks enabling companies to migrate existing applications to, or build new ones on, a cloud foundation. 

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Over the years, I've learned that predicting what will happen in emerging technologies is much easier than predicting when it will happen. Case in point: hybrid clouds. Many of us in the cloud community predicted in 2009 that cloudbursting would be the impetus for an explosion in public cloud consumption; and I went so far as picking 2010 as the beginning of the transition.

Well, my prediction was sound in direction but way off the mark in timing. Since 2009, I've learned that the barriers to hybrid cloud are more numerous than originally anticipated -- something I'll address in greater depth in a future post. However, seeing mass adoption on the horizon in 2016 (I'm crossing my fingers this time), it's important to move the conversation forward by providing some introspection on where the hybrid cloud is today.

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