The Cloud. The single most over-used perhaps over-hyped word since we all went “green” a few years ago. Don’t get me wrong, cloud is as legit as the green movement, but when will the constant onslaught of stats, graphs, charts and five-second soundbites stop being soundbites and start being directives?
In my old role in marketing we talk a lot about “what, so what, therefore.” “What” being exactly that…the what – in this case the stats, charts, and graphs – the soundbites. “So what” meaning what’s the impact, the meaning, the importance. And, “therefore” being the action, the direction, the desired output, or even outcome. It seems we get a lot of “what” type of information when it comes to THE CLOUD, and I am as guilty as the next guy, just read some of my previous posts. We all get caught up in the buzz, but at the end of the day, we all have to ask ourselves “so what” before we can even attempt to establish “therefore,” or some sort or direction, or decide if we even have to in the first place.
This is particularly applicable when it comes to storage technology. In fact, the data growth story is one that may not approach the level of cloud in terms of the hype scale, but it is definitely both related and guilty of being very heavy on the what, and not so much on the so what, and therefore. Infographics are known for being a great source of a lot of the stats, charts, and graphs I talked about earlier. Have you even tried dissecting an infographic to come up with the so what, and therefore implications, possibilities, and solutions for your business? I attempted this relative to Seagate in my last post titled “Storage causing CIOs to scratch their heads and pound the calculator.”
I love the infographic below, but let’s apply the what, so what, therefore thinking to this one as well.
The what can be found right in the title. Cloud growth is indeed explosive. The so what is that it’s here to stay, growing, and is in fact simply the next evolution of the data center — a data center that’s not bound by the capabilities of hardware. It’s the result of the growth of extremely smart software that knows how to stretch the bounds of hardware to deliver more responsive, flexible, scalable, and ever faster computing experiences. The cloud model is one that breaks the boundaries of proximity to provide computing with real purpose.
Therefore, since we are just scratching the surface of what cloud computing can offer, hardware technology will need to get faster, be more modular and become more open to enable even more intelligent software. I think where we are heading away from a world of commoditized hardware driven to the limits by smart software, to one where advancements in hardware feed the on-going innovations in software.
If cloud computing is to go where we all believe it is destined to go, the two (hardware & software) cannot be mutually exclusive.
In the infographic — it should be “ZB” not “Zb” … http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte