In the past two years, every vendor has packaged its offering with the word Cloud or Cloud Computing in it. I don’t blame them being the buzzword of this decade, though that create a hell of confusion to customers. In many cases that confusion was even against the vendor it self. I mean if you want just to sell a simple hardware box and you put the word Cloud Computing, you might end up confusing the user of what he is buying and leave it all for not understanding what he is exactly getting. Further, It has definitively hurt the real Cloud Computing Vendors.

I have even seen a rising article lately, that try to mark what is a Cloud Computing & what is not Cloud Computing. An Old one that have brought my attention today and got me to write this post is “15 ways to tell its not cloud computing” by James Governor can be read at here. The idea behind the article was to guide people how to eliminate companies who claim to offer Cloud Computing, but has nothing to do with it in reality. The problem with post that it went to extremes that no one in the market today qualify to be a Cloud Computing provider. Below I will show few of the points I disagree with in his list:

1- If you can’t buy it on your personal credit card… it is not a cloud  <== What About Private Cloud Computing?

2- If you know where the machines are… its not a cloud.  <== In most Cloud offering today you will have at least a  proximity in which region or country your workload is being process. Most vendors offer that info in their dashboard. This will even eliminate all the big players including Amazon, VMware, Microsoft, Google. Again, what about Private Cloud?

3- If there is a consultant in the room… its not a cloud <== Hmm this is totally cancel the concept of Private & Hybrid Cloud Computing. How would you design or create your private Cloud without a Consultant. Lol, if this is true then Consultants specialized in Cloud Computing should prepare their CVs. Hmm, you have been warned guys.

4- If you own all the hardware… its not a cloud.  <== Again what about Private Cloud?

5- If it takes 20 slides to explain  <== Hmm, so how large is the slide deck that explain a real Cloud. Maybe I should start making sure my Cloud Computing Presentation is 19 Slides or less.

I don’t deny James expertise in this field, but this is an old post and worth revisiting specially that many people are still hit that post even internally in VMware. Actually this post was forwarded to me internally by a colleague who thing it was quite useful but over looked the short comes of it. I hope James will have some time to update it soon, & I will be dropping him a comment on his blog too. Till then, I thought I will leave this post in case people get confused by James out dated post.

Who said you can only find Cloud in the Sky, I believe start seeing it in IT these days :).