Cloud Computing: Eyes on the Sky, Feet on the Ground

I am sure I have tried to be more practical, realistic, relevant and reasonable so far with my blog postings on Business Case @ Cloud and Make Money @ Cloud series. I understand the real cloud implementation and broader industry adoption is farfetched, and there are challenges on the way – maturity of platform & services, standardization & interoperability, data security & ownership, and so on.

Assuming all these tactical or technical issues gets resolved, assuming that it becomes a default IT infrastructure standard - where the world will go say after 5 years, 10 years or beyond that on cloud horse? How long is the life-cycle of Cloud? How long is it going to stay?

These are the kind of questions that can be answered if we capture the ideas related to the solutions and services “beyond obvious clouds”. In this series we will capture “visionary cloud solutions & services” - of course - some of them could be easy wins and some of them could be just dreams. I will start with cloud stereotype – “The Vertical Clouds”.

Let us explore the concept of Vertical Clouds

We have heard enough about public cloud, we have also heard about the term private clouds to a large extent. In a vague mean, I would map the Industry Verticals to Vertical Clouds. I have been observing the latest trends and influencing factors that will emerge and make sense out-of “vertical clouds”. There are people who are willing to buy; there are people who are willing to develop and sell – so business can be done – full stop – the rest is modality & formality. Let us take some examples of trends & influencing factors:

Vertical Cloud

Buyer

Seller

Federal Cloud

In the recent times Obama and the TIGR (Technology, Innovation and Government Reform) team considers cloud computing and related technology innovations as key means for Government Transformation & IT cost savings in the current economic conditions.
You can enjoy the video on YouTube titled – “Inside the Transition: Technology, Innovation and Government”. Does it click like - we have a buyer in place with enough funds!
The next level focus is on creating standards relevant to cloud computing that can be subscribed by the various Government agencies.

Yes, it is easy to find Seller as always.
The various players such as Apptis and ServerVault have created an offering targeted for the key Government Vertical (!) – “Federally Compliant Trusted Cloud Computing” - through FedCloud.com.
The claim is that the offering will provide on-demand infrastructure in compliance with federal mandates – you can consider looking at various FISMA compliant checklists, whitepapers and other relevant artifacts.
The idea is excellent & visionary and also aligned with the recent moves for creating or extending standards (FISMA, DITSCAP/DIACAP, OMB, etc) for cloud computing through focused organizations such as NIST, NCOIC and so on. So we have a seller in place!

Legal Cloud

You have come across the term Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) for cost optimization by leveraging economical talent (cheap labor!) across the globe.
As you are aware, there are multiple variants of BPOs in terms of Legal Process Outsourcing (LPO), Knowledge Process Outsourcing and so on.
Does it click like a buyer for Legal Clouds?

Now the seller - nScaled offers Legal Cloud solutions specifically designed to meet the needs of international law firms.
The solution could be a combination of Shared Data Centers on Cloud, Business Process Automation Tools on Cloud and Talent staffing as like normal BPO consuming the Legal Cloud Platform.
There might be more players and more variants of solution / service offerings too, you can find out.

Share your thoughts beyond business – Does this idea make sense? Is it the step in the right direction? Will it really help, to what degree? How long will it take, is it sustainable? And of course, how big is this opportunity and what are the innovations possible?

How does this trend impact Cloud Computing Roadmap?

Isn’t cloud computing visualized as more-of horizontal offering with unlimited IT infrastructure so far? How does the concept of Vertical Clouds matter to the current cloud computing technology roadmap? Does it really matter OR these are independent to each other and both can have their own progression roadmap?

Yes, answer is more than obvious, if you ask an expert – both have to align to some degree and can progress independently beyond that. To a large extent, what I think the answer is - it lies in the unknown so far – which is – “cloud standardization & interoperability”. We have more mature industry standards in various business verticals – be it Legal, be it Finance, be it Insurance and so on. The next step is to figure-out “how do we align both for maximizing the business benefits”?

Let us explore the thoughts, share yours.

What Next?

Think about Finance Cloud or Insurance Cloud and we might have our next discussion around it, wait for it or subscribe this feed. We invite your thoughts, ideas, suggestions, corrections, comments or brickbats.

Don’t forget to check our blog series on Make Money @ Cloud and Business Case @ Cloud or subscribe this feed.

Comments

A step forward to realize Federal Cloud:

Using the GSA Storefront, federal agencies would choose infrastructure, Web applications, or other IT services to begin a streamlined procurement process.

http://www.informationweek.com/news/government/cloud-saas/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=218500656

Posted by: Bhavin Jayantilal Raichura | September 14, 2009 06:14 AM