Consuming the Enterprise
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Loading ...In which the writer continues his work as a part-time, volunteer DJ at the cloud computing rave (do kids still rave nowadays, or is it called something else?)…
Let’s slay another dying beast that still has too much life in rhetorical circles:
“The cloud is fine for consumer stuff, but not robust enough for the enterprise.”
Counterexamples:
- World of Warcraft runs a million concurrent users on occasion. How many enterprise systems can handle a million concurrent users, while continuously upgrading, while running an economy larger than that of many countries, while under constant attack by organized crime? Oh, what cheap, consumer grade technology!
- The newly launched OnLive thin client gaming system promises to provide high def, real-time video across the Internet at a time when enterprises are struggling to provide local real-time video and thin client UIs with hardware-intensive in-house solutions. I want this technology at the office. I could use it today.
- My sole interaction with my bank is via the Internet. I hear tell that those financial services types know a thing or two about enterprise IT.
- Consumer shops like Amazon provide such a volume of service to consumers that they can sell cutting edge enterprise computing tools like EC2 to enterprises as mere excess capacity;
I like to say that a new generation is growing up on consumer cloud technologies, such that when they enter the enterprise world a decade or two from now and eventually take command of it (embrace and extend?), they’ll warm up to cloud services just fine.
But I doubt we’ll have to wait that long.
