This Cloud Ain't New!

I'm always amazed how IT can repeatedly coin terms to make old things seem new. And it's difficult to explain it to the non-technical person that the cloud is simply just another confusing word that even IT people don't agree on.

Well, here's my two cents on the whole thing.

A long, long time ago, there was the mainframe. And IT looked upon the mainframe and said we can manage all services in a central location, distribute dumb terminals to the users, ease end-user support, bill according to usage and hence buy powerful CPU's for the mainframe. And it was good.

Then came the PC which was cheap and IT declared, the PC has lots of processing power for the average user and can off-load some of the workload from the mainframe so let us deploy the PC with client software, distributed via CD's and DVD's and train the end-user to be self sufficient and we will ease the stress on the mainframe.

And so it was done. Led by Microsoft and IBM and HP and Dell that the PC flourished and there was a proliferation of software in the land and the users did so consume of the software and it became bloated and full of bugs and the end-user turned to IT and wailed and there was much gnashing of teeth and sadness in user-land.

And IT got together in pub-land and did consume much mead, reminiscing of the good old days of mainframe when they did control the storage, and the software, and the processing power. On the sixth, or sixteenth, pitcher did one of them declare; why not make use of the Internet? It is much loved by the end-user who spends most of his time on-line using the PC but we must disguise it, rename it, call it something else. And when the pub did close, and the lights were turned on for IT to leave did one network administrator look upon the light bulb and declare, I have seen the light. We can use the symbol for the Internet in describing this new, old technology.

And thus the Cloud was born. And IT was much happier and rejoiced in their finding and they told the marketing team to sell the cloud as the new technology to ease the woes of the end-user.

But there was a faction in IT that did not buy this story and they declared to tell the end-user that they were being sold lemons, not oranges. But this rogue faction was defeated for after another evening in pub-land, IT declared that there could be many versions of the Cloud. Business could have the public Cloud accessible via the Internet, or they could have the private Cloud sitting in their server rooms. And the rogue IT faction was confused and the public Cloud marketing group fell upon them and consumed them and they became ill and soon everyone was speaking in tongues.

And VMware and Microsoft and Citrix and HP and IBM and all the other large system vendors looked upon the land and saw the confusion and they were glad.