I’ve been spending more of time in the Cloud from an application/user perspective recently as opposed to from the service provider/infrastructure position I usually find myself in.

What drives me nuts (probably more than anything!) about the Cloud is the sheer level of bad and misleading information out there that just confuses the rest of the folks in the real world.

I see top ten lists all over and thought it might be fun to put together one for my viewpoint on the 10 things people need to know about the Cloud.

It’s a working, organic list – feel free to comment.

Here goes…

1. There is no such thing as “on-premise”

A “premise” is “a proposition supporting or helping to support a conclusion” [sic] in Cloud contexts people mean to say “premises” (or “prem” for short), this error cooks my noodle.

2. SaaS, IaaS, PaaS are the de facto service models

Anything else “as a service” is just made-up marketing verbage from folks trying to sell you something. That’s why the term AaaS fits so nicely.

3. Private, Public and Hybrid are the de facto delivery models

Like the AaaS terms, any other Cloud delivery models are just made-up sales terms to bamboozle and confuse you.

4. On-premises is a confusing term

On-premises is frequently used to describe “traditional IT operations” (see this post for more detailed thoughts on this) but in reality it is more appropriate to think of it (in Cloud contexts) as a software licensing model.

5. Security is not as big an issue as you think

It is almost certain that the weak link in your Cloud security is you. Most bona fide, reputable Cloud services providers will have significantly greater security capabilities than you could ever dream of having.

6. Sovereignty is potentially an issue

If the location of data is important to you (perhaps for statutory or regulatory reasons) then where your data is being kept (and in most cases replicated to) can be the major challenge to Cloud adoption.

7. You almost certainly will not see immediate reduction in expenditure

Unless you are in a position to arbitrarily and immediately de-commission existing services or are adding net new services, the cost of migrating to the Cloud will (in most cases) be significant.

8. Metered services are not always simpler

Conceptually, metered services should be simple. Unfortunately, the necessity for service providers to offer choice tends to make them complex.

9. Hosting is not the Cloud

Cloud services exhibit numerous characteristics of which “in somebody else’s remote datacentre” is not one. See NIST for more information on this.

10. For most organisations Hybrid scenarios will be the best choice

With the exception of net new or very small businesses, few organisations will be in a position to arbitrarily consume all of their IT services from the Cloud. Hybrid consumption is likely to be the norm now and in the future.

Over the coming few weeks/months I’ll expand on some of these points.

more to follow…