Forgoing the hyperbole of cloud computing predictions – sensational outages to a cloud-in-every-pocket – I want to start 2010 discussing the enduring aspects of cloud computing on enterprise business-technology. Regardless of the final manifestation of cloud computing, and the tally of deployments, successes and failures, I believe cloud computing will influence the expectations and practice of enterprise business-technology throughout the decade.
I have identified five enduring aspects from a practitioner perspective. Certainly, there are enduring aspects on the provider side as well, such as advances from Infrastructure 2.0 and disruptions created by new economic and pricing models. However, I will leave that list for provider-side specialists.
The first three enduring aspects focus on the expectations from business-technology organizations.
1. Resource Optimization – Cloud computing has raised Executive awareness to the disproportion of installed versus utilized computing capacity, along with the requisite expenses of space, power, software licenses and support personnel.
If they have not already, Executives will mandate infrastructure ecology initiatives, starting with the consolidation and pooling of compute and data resources, and progressing to software execution efficiency.
