Thinking Outside the Firewall

There is so much buzz and hype around Cloud Computing that I thought I might need to jump on the bandwagon, so I am announcing that I am now a "Cloud Advocate" what ever that means...

Well first, one must understand what the Cloud is. From my perspective, it is an electrically charged and over-hyped buzz word that can be applied to any technology that is being produced, marketed and sold by any IT vendor in today's marketplace. It is an adjective, an adverb and a noun all wrapped up in one nebulous (and Cloudy) word that immediately demonstrates that the technology to which it is associated is in vogue.

However, I don't see the Cloud as a technology. It really depends on your perspective, but to me, Cloud is either an architectural strategy or a business strategy. Architecturally, to refer to Cloud Computing simply means that computing resources are being utilized from outside of one's firewall. From a business perspective, Cloud Computing simply means that computing resources are being provisioned from outside of one's firewall. In either case, the cost and complexity are drastically reduced as a function of technical innovations such as multi-tenancy or business innovations like metered usage.

So if Cloud Computing is an architectural and/or business strategy, then, obviously the reason why it is being pushed by so many technology vendors is too cash-in on the hype. But why aren't the traditional sources for strategy and architecture consulting jumping on this bandwagon in droves?

They are starting to. But there are some fundamental business implications of adopting a Cloud strategy that may or may not bring serious consequences to bare for their business models. As a result, in the past 6 months, I have been retained to provide strategic overviews to the "Cloud" strategists at some pretty large traditional IT vendors, solutions providers and even the some within the venture capital community. I guess that gives me the right to coin myself a "Cloud Advocate" and to start charging good money for my perspective (even though I am giving it here for free).

The question that I keep getting is "What is the Killer App for Cloud?"

It depends, but usually, my answer to that question is this, "The Cloud means the eventual demise of vendors selling DATABASE DRIVEN APPLICATIONS" and therefore the killer application for Cloud is no applications at all. Instead, the Cloud needs to be viewed for what it truly is; a business abstraction layer on top of a universal network of computing resources which presents a ubiquitous platform for infinitely mashing up data to address user and organizational needs with regard to specific and situational instances. So the entire internet is the Cloud and therefore any platform built on it simply cannot exist behind a firewall because the majority data is resident outside the firewall.

Am I saying that applications won't be written anymore? No, I am simply saying that the commercial incentive to develop, market and sell applications will diminish to a point at which the return will no longer justify the effort. This is a function of two things; the abundance of existing applications and the immediacy of updates to them. When an application is written once and deployed universally to its users it enforces processes and data standards, but without either, the application itself is not tremendously valuable to the economy at large, it only has value to its specific users in their specific situation. However, the data it contains does have value outside of the immediate user community and, with proper structural and security questions addressed, has infinite value to a plethora stakeholders outside the firewall.

We are seeing this trend already in the Biotechnology and Pharmaceutical space as well as health care and several other industries. Data from outside the firewall, from sources like Google or national and commercial databases is being mash-up with information from traditional on-premise systems to provide new insight. Research, marketing and sales people all know that to limit your data set is to limit your horizon. In fact every day, I mash data from sources such as Hoovers, LinkedIn, Twitter and endless RSS feeds with my own CRM database to provide more complete profiles of my prospects and clients. But that is a discussion for another blog...

This brings me to my own question, if there is value in bringing data from outside the firewall and mashing it with data from inside, then what's the use of firewalls at all? Shouldn't the emphasis be on the data not the network? Obviously, its time to start thinking outside the firewall...