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‘Mainstream’ meanings for the cloud

At the CloudWorld event in San Francisco, panelists question whether cloud computing, quickly gaining mainstream adoption, could replace system ownership entirely. Panelists include Joe Weinman of AT&T Business Solutions, Sam Charrington of Appistry, James Urquhart of Cisco Systems and the CNET Blog Network, and Timothy Chou of Ming Holdings.

>> So, if there's one quick thing that has to happen to really make Cloud computing and both things that surround it more mainstream, what would it be? I'll go right down the list and, by the way, these guys are great to have drinks with afterwards so find them if you want to do that as well. Go ahead James.

>> James: Yeah, I think the number one thing is that there has to be some standardization in a couple of different ways. So, first of all, I mean as long as it's about building servers up and kind of -- it gets very geeky very fast and there's a lot of consumer sass like things out there that people use all the time so, obviously, the more you can drive the simplicity to inaudible example, drive the simplicity to a point where a less and less skilled person can use The Cloud the better. So easier ways of acquiring the services, easier ways of consuming the services are really, I think, where we're gonna go and standardization will play a big role there.

>> Tim

>> Tim: Education

>> Okay

>> Tim: I think people don't know so I'm gonna challenge you guys out there. There have been 11 software companies that have gone public since the year 2000 who are all delivering their software as a service in The Cloud etcetera, meaning business people are not owning the computers. So I'll challenge you all to send Jeff who the 11 are and we'll send the first 10 people who have the correct answer a copy of the book.

>> Jeff: And they're in the book, by the way.

>> Tim: That was a trick question.

>> Jeff: There you go.

>> Tim: So, but I just say to people they don't really realize this --

>> Jeff: Yeah

>> Tim: that, basically, almost no software company has gone public in the past 8 years, is not delivering, if you will, off of computers that no one owns other than themselves.

>> Jeff: Good point.

>> Tim: And we need to tell people stuff like this.

>> Jeff: Good point.

>> So I'll answer the question from the micro prospective, what can we do, and I'm a big fan of just jumping in. The Cloud technology is fantastic because it's very easily accessible so figure out a way that makes sense to you to apply it and get started whether that means convening a team of an architect, maybe a developer, maybe a business analyst or if you're an individual developer just getting started with one of the many fantastic offers out there.

>> Jim

>> Jim: I would say 2 things, one of which is Cloud stuff is already real right, whether you're dealing with services, obviously, whether it's advertising supported or subscription supported or infrastructure, so it already is here, right? I think that the danger is the over-hype notion, and Bernie you mentioned something today about a lot of people like to say no matter what the question is the answer is always Cloud computing and you've got people writing books like The Big Switch saying, Cloud computing is just like electricity it's gonna take over everything. But the fact is that on demand utility dispersed services don't always take over everything otherwise we all would only drive rental cars, we would only stay in hotels and we would only eat in restaurants. So I think the truth is we've got to calm down the hype and recognize that there is actually a lot of value to these hybrid solutions, the enterprise data center is not gonna go away and so the real challenge is how do you make all this stuff kind of work optimally given all the trade offs between the enterprise data center and The Cloud and recognize that everything has a role going forward.

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