“Cloudy April” Part 1: Full of I.T. with my head in the clouds

Greetings!   Welcome to my 31-part series of articles all about this thing called “the cloud”.

“Seriously, Kevin? Is this some warped April-Fools joke? Haven’t we heard enough about ‘the cloud’?”

I’m going to answer that question with another question: What have you heard? 

“It means something I use is hosted somewhere else. But honestly… every company out there has added the word ‘cloud’ to their products just to get people interested.”

Yeah.. that’s what I thought.  Your answer is typical of what many IT Pros and IT and business managers believe.  They understand that it’s something important.  They know it has to do with services or platforms or infrastructures that are delivered in a different (external?  hosted?  measured?) way.  An overwhelming majority of companies are looking to use or expand their use of hosted services.  Many are considering how to deliver IT as services to their business units, rather than just adding servers.  Massive Virtualization alone is good, but not sufficient to gain and support the kinds of scale that a well-designed, self-healing, self-provisioning, measured service can provide. 

“So we buy a new product that has the word ‘cloud’ slapped on the label?”

I wish it were that simple.  (But in some cases, it just might be!)

“And so you’re going to be blogging this month about all that ‘the cloud’ is?”

You obviously read the subject line.    Yes, indeed!  What I am going to do is give you one-article-per-day for the month of April; each pertaining to some aspect of cloud computing; whether it’s pointers to great resources, commentary on cloud-as-it-relates-to-IT, how IT is being transformed (and probably your job as well), or just my own ramblings and $.02 opinions.  I promise you will be informed, entertained (hopefully), and encouraged to consider new ways to improve your skills, your IT infrastructure, and your businesses.

April showers?  Perhaps.  My hope is that the clouds I bring you will not deliver rain, but will help the flowering of new IT insights and possibilities bloom and flourish.

“Gee, Kevin…That was beautiful. Poetic, even.”

Sorry.  It won’t happen again.

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Check back tomorrow for part 2.  We’re going to address right off the bat the 100lb gorilla in the room: The Cloud Ate My Job!