Cloud Computing News: Options Growing in the Cloud

Two current stories on the cloud computing front say a lot about where the cloud is going. And they may also say just as much about where the cloud is not going: It is not going to replace in-house IT anytime soon, if ever.

Advancing Fronts

From GigaOM comes news that Rackspace, a major cloud-services provider that has been serving customers from its own cloud data centers, is now "productizing" OpenStack cloud computing software and offering it to firms that want to set up their own private clouds.

As its name suggests, OpenStack is an open-source cloud platform. It was first developed by Rackspace and NASA, and has picked up other major supporters such as Hewlett-Packard and Dell.

As GigaOM notes, numerous firms have been looking for ways to gain the advantages of cloud computing without going into the public cloud. Says Mark Collier of Rackspace, "Developers and customers want to use Amazon or Rackspace public clouds but, for a number of reasons, their IT department is not in love with that option."

At the same time, InfoWorld reports that Software AG is now providing its "middleware" software tools as a PaaS offering, available to be deployed via VMware and Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud.

The current move, says Software AG’s Matt Durham, is only one step in the "huge undertaking" of fully reconfiguring its WebMethods, and the Aris process modeling tools, for PaaS deployment. In its final form, the middleware solution will also include an integrated development environment (IDE). InfoWorld also notes that Tibco, a Software AG rival, is moving in the same direction.

But IT Is Here to Stay

It was not long ago that cloud computing was being touted as a way for managers to get around their own firms’ IT departments–or a way for firms to dispense with IT altogether. But as the quote from Rackspace’s Collier above suggests, this is easier said than done.

The problem is that IT is inherently complicated and also "entangled" with other issues. A company can outsource its delivery trucks, and the firm’s managers and executives no longer need to know the ins and outs of the trucking business. Trucking has its own complications, but the business customer doesn’t need to know them.

IT is different. Even the simplest requirements cannot simply be put in a black box that the user has no need to understand. Someone needs to know what is going on, which means that someone in-house must understand IT principles.

As a result, cloud computing is coming to be not about "replacing IT," but about providing IT with new options for its toolkit.