A foggy sky

Recently and continuously a lot of tweets, articles and discussions circulates which are about or end up in the definition of cloud services and what differs them from other IT-services. Only last week I participated in two… I think we all could see this discussions coming sooner than later…

Reasons:
- Customers and even the customers with good knowledge of IT get confused – where do all the clouds come from?

- IT professionals haven’t decided, taken or know their position inside, outside or with the cloud.

- There are more clouds in the sky than it should be and some of them are not clouds.

…and the offer in the cloudy sky gets unreasonably foggy and drowned.

Almost everyone in the IT business try to use the definition cloud on their products and services with the goal to become a cloud service provider. One good example; At VMworld last week every single one of the about hundred exhibitors did have cloud written somewhere on their booth. Though many do it not everyone offer “pure” cloud services. Some of them most probably offer services for or to support clouds or they might even create wishclouds, either by labeling new or re-labeling existing non-cloud services and products.

Why?

Because we don’t know what we are talking about! But most possible; because of the almost insane focus from the big IT providers and media we think our business won’t survive if we don’t put a ‘cloud’ to the service or product offered. And that is so totally wrong.

Cloud itself is not hype but it’s definitely a media- and service provider’s hype. So you will survive even if delivering non cloud IT services. They are needed and will still be needed in the future.

To do:

- IT professionals have to focus to tell the true story. Don't add a cloud definition on the service if not it easily can be defined as a cloud service – don’t make wishclouds.

- There's no need to be ashamed of delivering IT services without “a cloud” or without a cloud definition. Explain how your service adds value for your customer.

Creating wishclouds; it’s bad for the cloud market and it’s bad for your own business. It’s like when you hear good music and it becomes a one hit wonder; you like it a couple more times but soon you get fed up.

Make a long lasting hit of your cloud service, the service supporting the cloud or the non-cloud service. But do it properly and correct; If it isn’t a cloud service don’t call it a cloud service. Then it will be much easier to keep offerings apart and the sky reasonably cloudy and we will not get fed up on the definition.

#WishCloud, my own tag and definition of IT services not to be defined as cloud. They only have a little ingredient of cloud but the provider wish and claim it to be cloud anyway.