Source: Ryan Companies
I love Home Depot. But I shop just as often at my local Ace Hardware store. I go to Home Depot for big purchases, and stop in at Ace for quick-grab items and localized expertise. What kind of mouse traps work best in our neighborhood?
IT will follow the same two-tier model into the next decade:
- Cloud Computing will dominate high-volume, low-touch applications and data storage
- In-house IT will provide critical business-customized information services either too unique or too strategic to trust to the Big Box cloud services
HP VP of cloud strategy Russ Daniels sees a similar trend. This flies in the face of many prognosticators of a gradual evolution to a Big Three cloud future where in-house IT becomes an administrator of out-sourcing vendors.
Both models need efficiency to succeed
While the Cloud will always have a cost advantage, both business models will rely on storage technology to dramatically increase efficiencies. The scale of economies from cloud mega-data centers’ proprietary designs will be matched by in-house leverage of server virtualization, storage consolidation and deduplication.
After all, my Ace Hardware buddies are just as likely to look for parts for me at their computer terminal as in the store aisle.
Those that adapt find a way to thrive. And adapting means lots more storage for both big and small IT.
[…] so much talk about the cloud on blogs far and wide, it was inevitable, I suppose. Blogger Dave Graham has penned a piece, with tongue firmly in cheek, […]