Storm Clouds

When The Wall Street Journal writes a front-page story making fun of cloud computing and cloud storage and cloud this and cloud that, you know we have reached a tipping point in the world of technology.

Under the mocking headline "The Internet Industry Is on a Cloud -- Whatever That May Mean", writers Geoffery Fowler and Ben Worthen wrote one of the newspaper's trademark in-depth features on the use of the word "cloud" and how tech companies "are jockeying to associate themselves with clouds." Along with jokes and puns on the word "cloud," the story points out that "few agree on the term's definition".

One amusing quote from Oracle CEO Larry Ellison early in the story: "I have no idea what anyone is talking about. It's really just complete gibberish. What is it?"

The Journal saved the punchline for near the end of the story when it reported that even Oracle has jumped on the cloud bandwagon. It seems that Ellison, in an earnings call earlier this month, said Oracle's upcoming software would be "cloud-computing ready."

I point this out because you are going to be hearing a lot more about clouds as we approach the spring technology tradeshow season. There are a whole host of cloud announcements scheduled from a wide variety of vendors, and some of them seem to offer promising products and services that will appeal to some enterprises looking to outsource their computing and/or storage needs to a third party. Expect to hear some grand promises that this cloud storage service or that cloud platform will solve all of your IT problems, save you money, let storage administrators or IT generalists sleep better at night, and solve world hunger.We've already seen vendors ranging from tech giant IBM to managed outsourcing specialist Savvis jump into the cloud, joining a large number that are already offering online backup and archiving services. And we've also seen a number of vendors pull out of the market or go belly up. Another cautionary note: Online storage service provider Carbonite is suing a storage vendor and one of that vendor's resellers over products that it says didn't perform as promised. The lawsuit says that this caused damage to Carbonite's business, although it isn't clear whether customers lost data stored with the company.

All of this makes it hard to know whether the frenzy over clouds is a passing fad or a real step forward in providing end users with a new and affordable IT infrastructure option. My colleagues over at InformationWeek are trying to do a reality check on storage as a service (SaaS), or cloud storage, to see if it can be a realistic alternative to on-premises storage. It issued a Request for Information aimed at SaaS vendors.

IW put forth a RFI for a hypothetical mid-sized company called DIY Marketing Services that requires 100 TB of storage to start, with expectations that data volume could triple or quadruple within a year. It outlines DIY's business and its existing IT infrastructure and technology goals, and seeks detailed information on vendors' service offerings, pricing, and service level agreements. Vendors interested in participating can download the RFI here (registration required).

This is the kind of exercise that can provide useful information to IT managers considering shifting some of their IT infrastructure to a service provider. For many conservative tech managers responsible for protecting and providing access to their company's crucial data, handing that job to another company seems rather risky. It requires a leap of faith that many won't make quickly, even if the service is offered by a big name vendor that they know and trust. There aren't a lot of enterprises with experience using some of these new service providers, so this RFI should prove to be helpful. Byte and Switch will look at the proposals that come in and bring you the analysis that IW develops in conjunction with outside experts. Stay tuned, and don't forget to carry an umbrella.

InformationWeek has published an in-depth report on data center unification. Download the report here (registration required).0