The Economist Debate on Cloud Computing

The magazine is running a debate on cloud computing between Marc Benioff, CEO of salesforce.com and Stephen Elop, President, Microsoft Business Division.

Please check it out and comment.

I commented as follows:

“How do you recover from someone saying “Have you quit beating your spouse?” Say yes, and you acknowledge you did it in the past. Say no, and it implies you are still doing it.

The title of this debate is similar. “Cloud Computing Can't Be Entirely Trusted” You put it at a disadvantage with a negative connotation then expect it to defend it on why it should be trusted.

After all, how dare cloud vendors challenge the establishment when the incumbents have delivered so much?

• Masses of bug fixes which have to be applied at each site individually on a relentless basis. Thank you, Microsoft.
• Months and months of upgrade rehearsals to get it done – maybe - on a long weekend. Thank you, SAP
• Billions of dollars in software shelfware with little ability to trade. Thank you, Oracle.
• Downtime of “planned maintenance” hours while supposedly meeting 99.99 uptime SLAs. Thank you, EDS
• Servers utilized at 20% in most data centers. Thank you, HP
• Storage at $ 100 a GB over 3 years to most companies, when you and I can buy 1 TB for the same price - 1000X the capacity for a one time payment. Thank you, EMC
• Cold war era bunkers called data centers which have few of the design, cooling, proximity to renewal energy sources, tax incentive efficiencies that Google, Yahoo!, amazon have shown. Thank you, IBM
• Ever seen stats on average uptime, recovery time etc in customer base from an on-premise vendor similar to what many SaaS vendors show that transparently on their trust sites? Thank you, on-premise vendors for sharing that information.
• Ever seen a SAS 70 Type II audit report on an on-premise implementation? Thank you, on-premise vendors for sharing those.

Yup, Economist, Cloud Computing Can't Be Entirely Trusted. The incumbent, on-premise establishment on the other hand can overprice, under-deliver, cause massive overruns, suck out 80% of our IT budgets for routine work – but we need to keep trusting them.”

Comments

[Anders]

I saw an entertaining video this morning with Larry Ellison, CEO and co-founder Oracle, hating the term Cloud Computing, also talking about salesforce.com

Video on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UYa6gQC14o&feature=player_embedded

[Sreekumar J]

People started trusting cloud and SaaS applications...it is a reality. I think, no enterprise application vendor with 'premium' price tags can stop a Small Business Owner from signing up for Online Payroll, CRM or
Project Collaboration tool. But by considering the pricing & customization requirements, large enterprises will continue OnPremise software