Connecting Clouds

A few weeks ago, I posted "Cloudy weather ahead" citing HP's abandonment of the Public Cloud.  This was days before the HPE/HPI separation, and the reaction of many to the post was 'confusion' to say the least.

"How could HP be abandoning the Cloud?" was the most popular refrain.

And of course they weren't, in terms of hybrid clouds, etc.

But this cloud business is ... indeed cloudy.

In today's SF Chronicle, I published a small article entitled, "Last mile: the home stretch for Hybrid Clouds"   You can see it at http://goo.gl/1JLunW

The observation essentially is that where the Cloud technology and deployment issues stand is akin to where connecting networks was in about 1985, before widespread adoption and deployment of routers.

Having done some work re Cisco history, I was struck by how few firms understood the power and the ease of connection for multiple disparate networks.  It took nearly a decade for most of the Fortune 500 to 'get on board,' astonishing as that might seem today.

IT directors, recall, are not paid to be risk-takers, but instead to be fully risk-averse.  We med with many of them when I ran R&D/Product Marketing for Informix circa 1991.  After one dinner with a number of IT CIOs, my wife on the way home said, "WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE?  DULLER THAN...."

It fits, and still fits today.  The issues today of course are complicated by cyber-security issues, contending vendors, and costly revamping of the core stack privileges.  But they were back then too....

Anyway, I hope you enjoy the article