Bubbles in the cloud
Jinfo Blog

By Tim Buckley Owen

Item

Is another dot.com type bubble on the way?  One commentator thinks there may be – in social media – but right now cloud computing looks as if it could create a pretty voluminous bubble too, and it would splatter a lot of people if it burst.

The social media warning comes from technology consultant Alan Patrick.  Quoted in an article in paidContent:UK, he lists ten telltale bubble signs – such as a flurry of new investment funds catering for start-ups, banks investing pension money in the New Thing, or a New Thing darling buying an old-world company for “stupid money”.

He might have added politicians promising economic nirvana on the back of a single technological development.  That’s what European Digital Agenda Commissioner Neelie Kroes seems to have done for cloud computing in advance of a visit to the CeBIT2011 information technology exhibition in Hanover recently; the accompanying press release speaks warmly of the cloud boosting Europe’s competitiveness, and details several projects that the European Union is funding.

Experts can be expected to take a more measured view.  Gartner believes that 2011 will be “the year of platform as a service” – referring to the layer of cloud technology architecture that contains all application infrastructure services – and reports too that Indian chief information officers are ranking cloud computing as their top technology priority for this year.  

But it also warns of risks that CIOs should address when contracting for cloud services, suggesting that contract terms usually favour the vendor and don’t necessarily have clear service commitments.  And other specialists are even more cautious. 

Technology analyst Ovum has further warned that enterprises are not taking the threat of cyber-espionage seriously enough, as criminals graduate from credit cards and banking details to product blueprints and customer lists.  If Ovum is right, you’d think that storing stuff in the cloud probably isn’t going to help.

Or is it?  IBM’s chief technology officer for cloud computing strategy, Harold Moss, claims that data in the cloud can actually be more secure: companies that shift their data there are more likely to be on their guard; they set up different security regimes appropriate to the stuff they’re moving; and a third party cloud service provider is likely to have superior security technology because it can spread the cost over a number of clients.

Well, maybe.  Reporting these views in the (intriguingly, IBM-sponsored) Smarter Planet blog, Steve Hamm wonders whether Moss is right, or whether this is just “self-serving IBM marketing spin”.

Most of the bubble characteristics that Alan Patrick catalogues don’t apply to the cloud yet.  But the hype is certainly there – and although procurement decisions will be made by CIOs, it’s info pros who will have to live with the consequences.  

« Blog