Richard Marcello, SVP Unisys, gave the keynote presentation at the Cloud Computing Expo. His talk was entitled “The Time is Right for Enterprise Cloud Computing”
The most interesting part of the presentation was a list of the “Nine Myths of Cloud Computing”:
- Myth #9 - Cloud computing is not new, not revolutionary
- Myth #8 - All clouds are the same
The speaker noted that there are many different types of clouds including: public, private and hybrid. He felt that in the long run, most companies would end up with hybrid solutions, running what is appropriate for each type of cloud. - Myth #7 - Cloud computing is about technology
Marcello walked through a slide of Forrester info on traditional data center vs a cloud-based solution. He focused on expense, financial risk and depreciation, noting that cloud computing is also about cost. - Myth #6 - Private clouds have no benefit over virtualization
The speaker felt that private clouds had to deliver self-provisioned capabilities. At Unisys, the average setup time for a developer went from 10 days to 5 minutes due to the creation of a self-service web-based UI. - Myth #5 - Cloud computing is not reliable
Marcello disagreed with this myth, focusing on having a disaster recovery strategy, data security requirements, data reliability (using ‘m’ of ‘n’ redundancy strategies) - Myth #4 - Cloud value is only about cost
Don’t let the improvement in agility get lost in the message - Myth #3 - Cloud is not for mainstream business applications
Marcello felt that cloud computing won't take off until this myth dies - Myth #2 - Cloud is inappropriate for compliance-regulated industries
If architected properly, can address all kinds of compliance issues - Myth #1 - Internal datacenter is more secure than the cloud
Overall, quite an interesting presentation; certainly some hype around the cloud, but good list nonetheless.