| I sometimes try to draw a few parallels between the classic client / server model. Although this might not be the best sales pitch (since it could make cloud look retro-active and deriviative) it can help focus understanding, depending on your audience.
Look at these similarities:
1) "Dumb" clients (terminals) are now called smart/thin clients (Citrix/RDP...). Little or no processing is done at the desktop.
2) Distributed enterprise data centers are being physically consolidated/centralized to save money and share costs.
3) Computing resources can be scaled and adjusted according to the customer's business requirements. IMHO, this is just a more sophisticated version of what we used to call computer time sharing.
4) Cloud companies now need specialized skills to run data centers. Desktop geeks and IT Generalists are not in as much demand anymore. Only the white lab coats are missing.
5) Distributed server and desktop TCO has become a financial headache for most companies. Cloud computing solutions offer or promise to fix this. Before, customers simply went to a proprietary vendor like IBM or Digital for turnkey solutions to solve their IT problems. Sound familiar?
6) VIrtualization technology has been around for decades. It has just become more accessible and cost-effective with today's cheaper and more powerful hardware.
The list goes on, but you could be forgiven for believing that "Cloud Computing" , SaaS, PaaS and IaaS are just the new buzzwords for the re-incarnated client server computing models so widely practiced in the 20th century. Sort of a full circle transformation. Cloud marketeers would do well to re-open the history books and see how successful companies sold (and delivered) their solutions to the enterprise. I am sure that words like, consolidation, reliability, cost-effectiveness were a standard part of their sales vocabulary.
Posted by Frank Rowland |
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