Cloud Computing is in the air and Ellison smells the hype

There is a discussion going on over at Tech-Army.org about Cloud Computing, particularly Oracle CEO Larry Ellison’s recent remarks in which he allegedly attacked the concept as overhyped. According to an article in eWeek , Ellison “spit” on the hype surrounding Cloud Computing and was quoted as saying that he didn’t understand it in a blog post by Wall Street Journal writer Ben Worthen.

In the post, Worthen quoted Ellison as saying “The computer industry is the only industry that is more fashion-driven than women’s fashion. Maybe I’m an idiot, but I have no idea what anyone is talking about. What is it? It’s complete gibberish. It’s insane. When is this idiocy going to stop?”

For those who still don’t know what the term Cloud Computing refers to, here’s the official definition from Wikipedia: 

 “Cloud computing is a general concept that incorporates software as a service, Web 2.0 and other recent, well-known technology trends, where the common theme is reliance on the Internet for satisfying the computing needs of the users. For example, Google Apps provides common business applications online that are accessed from a web browser, while the software and data are stored on the servers.”

Now, the basic argument here is that Ellison doesn’t get the concept of working in the cloud. However, I don’t think that is what he is talking about. It seems to me that he is not really attacking the concept as much as he is attacking the notion that companies are over hyping it. As hot a topic as it is today, he may have a point.

I’ve been reporting on developments in Cloud Computing in the last few episodes of The Force Field podcast . There is a lot of potential there, however I will give Ellison the benefit of the doubt and say that, although the concept interests me, I am not so sure everyone is ready for it, including some of the companies who aggressively promote it.

There are some caveats to it that I am not sure about yet. When I mean I am not sure, I mean that I have reservations about particular Cloud Computing applications or services and whether or not I really trust them enough to use or sell them myself.

 

Utilizing Cloud Computing requires the user to relinquish a certain amount of freedom and control locally. I am not very comfortable with the security aspects of it yet, either.  It also (obviously) requires constant and instant internet connectivity for access to the “cloud”, something that a lot of users still don’t have.

 

Are there advantages to it? Sure! In fact, there are numerous Cloud Computing applications that I believe have great potential and a few that I actually embrace. There is no doubt it has a very bright future as a viable business and service model.

 

But it doesn’t apply to every application or service we use today – yet. As a society that relies on independent access to applications and data 24/7 with complete control in a local environment and a measure of local privacy, secure in the knowledge that we know exactly where our data is, who has access to it and how to get to it, I am just not sure we are ready to trust it all to the cloud.

 

As for all the hype, sorry Larry, it’s all part of the game.