Page 124 - How Cloud Computing Is Transforming Business and Why You Cant Afford to Be Left Behind

MANA GEMENT STRATEGIES F O R THE CL OUD R EV OL UTION

This movement between internal and external centers will
need to occur in ways that minimize friction between the two.
What we have today instead is friction and resistance to the no-
tion of cloud computing at so many levels of the process that
it’s still hard to conceive of doing this on any sustained basis.
Several technical barriers exist, but we can start with dislike

for the term cloud computing on thepartoftheCEOand other
top-level executives, incompatible file formats demanded by
the different virtualization vendors, and proprietary moves
by cloud service suppliers. But skillful users, an increasing num-
ber of standards, and a growing supply of open source code
are keeping pressure on the artificial constraints, and some of
them will soon fall away.

What’s in a Name? CEO Opposition

Let’s start at the top. As Bob Evans of InformationWeek reported,
when HP CEO Mark Hurd, as no-nonsense a personality as
they come, spoke to a group of CEOs in late 2009, he described
the future possibilities of computing using the term cloud
and was nearly jeered off the stage. “Here I am talking about

the cloud and all kinds of cool things that can happen with the
cloud, and I got a lot of boos, um, after that. It started with
the whole term, ‘cloud.’”
After that experience, Hurd stated that “cloud comput-
ing” was an inadequate phrase for the things he wanted to talk
about. In a rare moment of harmony for two competitors,
IBM’s CEO Sam Palmisano agreed, saying that cloud was “an

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