Every so often the dam breaks within IT and the water flows into new technologies.  Such is the case now with cloud computing.  Hardware is getter cheaper/faster and telecommunications technology is providing more bandwidth, lower latency, for less money.  With the recent Google announcement to provide gigabit internet connections to your home makes the cloud computing possibilities very interesting.  What this leads to is very acceptable computing performance that is geographically displaced from the traditional office locations.  We have more options on where to store our IT infrastructure and how to operate it.

This is all good, but is there a dark-side of cloud computing?  It reminds me of the Warren Buffet quote, “We simply attempt to be fearful when others are greedy and to be greedy only when others are fearful.”  Over the last couple years, the early adopters of cloud computing were being “greedy” when others were fearful by taking the risk and adopting such technologies.  I reasoned to myself that if we adopt this technology, even if it provides half the expected benefits, our business will greatly benefit and we will be out in front.  Well now everyone is on the cloud computing bandwagon—is it time to be fearful?

This is why I freely admit that I am biased towards private clouds.  Private clouds give a business the ability to innovate.  I’m not saying that I would never buy services from a public cloud offering, but a business should never totally outsource innovation.  They can always afford some level of innovation.  As I was thinking about private clouds, I recalled a Tom Peters book that I read years ago called “Liberation Management”.  Tom talked about “deep grooves” being a good thing as well as a bad thing.  As corporations get very good at something, they setup processes and technology to further automate that process.  They create a deep groove.  While that deep groove may serve their customers and drive revenue in the short-term, what happens when business conditions and technologies change?  Their “deep groove” is no longer needed or it now costs more than some very good alternatives.  Their deep groove now has become a barrier to innovation and change.  Putting your entire IT into a public cloud is setting up a “deep groove”.  In the short-term this cloud innovation is probably way better than the innovation you can do yourself.  But why not hedge your bet?  Setup a private cloud as the innovation platform for you to consume public cloud offerings or be in a position to take advantage of the next wave of innovation.

Entrepreneurs are constantly leaving corporate jobs to create new “grooves”.  The big cloud providers are corporations that are building very deep grooves.  I want to be in a position where I can take advantage of the big guys “deep grooves” as well as embrace the “new grooves” created by the people that left the large cloud providers.  And I’m doing that with my private cloud.