The Cloud Diagnosed By IT. And It Isn’t Pretty

September 23, 2011 Off By David

Grazed from Forbes. Author: Brad Peters.

As the long-anticipated backlash against cloud computing begins, I want to thank technology journalist and IT consultant Frank J. Ohlhorst for making the strongest case yet for the anti-cloud camp… and in the process making the case for the cloud stronger than ever…

Recently, in a thoughtful and well-written blog essay, Ohlhorst sets out all of the arguments to make against companies adopting the cloud model over an in-house IT operation. He makes some very good points; but with a little scrutiny it quickly becomes apparent that the topics Ohlhorst doesn’t address are even more important – and telling – than the ones he does.

Here, in brief summary, are Ohlhorst’s arguments why companies should probably steer clear of the “hype” surrounding cloud computing these days. I’ll list each of his points in turn, then add my counter-argument:

1. Cloud storage is anything but perfect. Sure, there are some application where a Cloud-based file and data repository makes perfect sense, but just as often going to the cloud can do much more harm than good. A classic, and very subtle, rhetorical trick is to grant your opponent all of his claims – and more! The idea is to demand of that opponent an impossible requirement for perfection that is never demanded for your own side. Representing the corporate IT camp, the folks with the most to lose from cloud computing, Ohlhorst never points out that the genesis of cloud computing was the deep disappointment and frustration most companies felt with their existing in-house IT departments. The real question should be: Is cloud computing marginally better than IT? The marketplace is already answering that question.

2. Cloud computing is slow. I’ll give Ohlhorst this one; access and storage speeds are slower with the cloud than local storage . . . on average. This is largely due to the fact that most users access the cloud via the existing broadband. But I’ll also note that Ohlhorst is using apples and oranges here, because the performance of both parties is a function of price/performance. Airplanes are faster than automobiles, but a Piper Cub is slower than a Bugatti Veyron – that is, if I want to spend IT-level dollars on the cloud, I can get nearly IT speed.

3. The cloud isn’t as secure as IT. This comment plays upon the very human fear that if you entrust your assets to someone else – and thus give up tight control – you are greater risk of loss. We entrust our money to banks because they have giant secure vaults and men with guns and federal insurance programs to protect that money. By the same token, the big cloud providers can afford to hire the best data security experts and install the most expensive hardware and software protections for the data they manage – can your typical corporate IT department say the same?

4. You have less control over your data in the cloud. This one will make every corporate non-IT executive laugh – as if they ever had any control over the company’s data when it was handled by the Pharisees of the IT department. Indeed, I’m sure many now feel they have greater access to company data, now that it is sitting in some anonymous server a thousand miles away than when it was on a similar server just down the hall. What Ohlhorst is really saying is: We in IT now have less control over your data. And that’s not a bug, but a feature for the rest of us.

5. Cloud storage isn’t nearly as reliable as its providers claim it to be. Once again, I’ll grant to Ohlhorst that some cloud providers have overhyped their reliability by offering performance of 99.999 percent reliability. But this is also a bit of redirect on his part: even if most cloud companies can’t reach this level of reliability, their performance is still far better than anything found in the typical corporate IT department. If Ohlhorst is going to hold the other side to such high standards, in fairness he needs to do the same with his own team. Forget Five-9s; can any corporate IT department out there claim even Three-9s reliability?

6. Cloud storage: It’s not all bad. The negatives of cloud storage do quickly add up. However, with some common sense and planning, cloud storage can be a valuable asset to today’s businesses – for example, in the sharing of documents and spreadsheets with mobile users, and as part of a disaster recovery plan. This is called ‘damning with faint praise.’ Here, Ohlhorst is essentially admitting that cloud computing is here to stay, but now trying to confine it to a nice, safe reservation where it won’t be a threat anymore to IT’s hegemony. Nice try, but it is already too late.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this piece, what is most compelling about Ohlhorst’s argument is what it leaves out.

For example, remarkably, nearly every point he makes in his argument deals with problems, not benefits. This is classic IT department paranoia: the Pharisees are always more concerned with the data you shouldn’t be allowed to access than what you need to be more productive. The amount of applications and services offered by even average cloud providers dwarfs that offered by corporate IT departments – and the list of those offerings grows by the day.

But that’s minor compared to the other factor that Ohlhorst leaves out in his argument. This one is the biggie – the decisive reason why more and more companies are migrating to the cloud: scale. The capital investment required just to build a corporate IT department is enormous. And these are fixed costs. If you want to expand your services, that’s even more money. And, God forbid, if you want to reduce your usage, what are you going to do: take a couple servers off-line and stick them in a closet until you need them again? The great secret of IT has always been that its financial model is absurd, like constructing a hydroelectric plant to service your factory – it sounds nice to have that kind of control, but then you’re faced with the reality of buying all of that equipment, hiring experts, upgrading, and devoting a lot of time and resources to an operation peripheral to your real business.

The same is true with corporate IT. The profession is trying to fight against the economics of scale – a fight it can’t win on the balance sheet. Hence the appeal to fear – slower, less reliable, less controllable, …. And we can expect those claims to get even more shrill in the future, as new products, such as Windows 8 make the cloud even more appealing.

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