I wanna be Larry – “What the hell is Cloud Computing?”
Man oh man did I think that I was a smart guy. The week that the Fed announces its Cloud strategy, we issue a press release announcing our Cloud solution. Coincidence? I think not! Brilliant and genius marketing strategy? Of course! But not according to Larry…..
As we waded into the Cloud pond, we just couldn’t nail down a solid definition of what the Cloud was…so how could we market and sell it? We asked our hardware vendors, our software vendors, we read trade rags, we took an internal poll….no two answers were the same. I started to think that “Cloud” was like “aloha”…it sort of means whatever you want it to mean at that point in time.
Its basic marketing 101: if I cant define it, I cant sell it. So we all but gave up. But you have to be in the game, so we plodded on. We finally settled on OUR definition and launched our product and followed with a press release! Horizon was in the Cloud business! Man it felt GREAT to be on “the cutting edge” “the tip of the spear” “the…eh” you get it.
And then the worse thing that could happen, happened. Larry (for you folks outside of the technology world or those of you still read print newspapers, “Larry” is Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle. Sort of like Pele, guys like Larry, Bill, John, and Michael are known by a single moniker. Sort of like the Beatles of technology) poo poo’d the Cloud. Holy batcrap Batman, Larry makes fun of the Cloud (have a listen)! Larry says that the Cloud is” just doing more of what we have been doing”! WHAT! Are you telling me I based a whole product development and marketing cycle on a FAD? Oh man am I going to get fired. Larry said I am “full of crap” and “insane”…
I was worried for a few days…I hoped my friends, company, boss, investors dont find out that we put together a product and marketing story around something that Larry makes fun of. Not good.
I had one last hope. I needed the Federal government to validate the Cloud (and me). Only THE FED is bigger than LARRY. Come on Uncle Sam..once again my fate is in your hands…don’t let me down.
So yesterday, I watch with bated breath for the announcement (as reported by Rich Miller at DCK) from none other than the US CIO Vivek Kundra. Was my definition of Cloud going to validated? Would Horizon’s Cloud future go the way of Larry’s fad or were we in sync with Uncle Sam.
VINDICATION. Looks like the Fed and Horizon share EXACTLY the same definition of the Cloud!!! Perfect. Take that Larry! It’s true, I AM A GENIUS!!
Well not really. In the absence of finding a cohesive definition of the Cloud, we went to the largest buyer of IT in the world. The Fed. Seems they have been defining the Cloud for some time. Our friends at NIST have given the Cloud tons of thought. (I have all of their presentations). In the absence of standardization, Horizon went to the mother ship of standardization…The Fed. We built our solution to the NIST definition.
And you know Larry might be right, we (including The Fed) might be wrong. Its just marketing hype for what we have been doing all along. But you know what Vivek Kundra said? He said that this is the definition of Cloud Computing…wait for it…..from the “BUYER PERSPECTIVE”. Get it. It is STILL about the buyer. We dont develop solutions that make us happy, we develop based on the “buyer perspective”. How novel.
And Larry is wrong. It’s not the same. The Fed is getting out of the infrastructure business. And that opens a lot of doors. The Fed getting out of the infrastructure business is opening so many more security issues that have ever been envisioned (just read the Cloud Security Alliance on LinkedIn if you dont believe me) this in and of itself will create work for all of us.
This is exciting, we are using some of the same gear, same software, but we are delivering it a pretty cool fashion. And you know what? This old grunt is glad to serve my country once again. If The Fed can save MY tax dollars and reduce their carbon footprint because my competitors and I are delivering something cool…I sleep peacefully at night.
So. Why would I want to be Larry? How cool would it be, to be so rich, so powerful, so bulletproof, that you can make fun of technology initiatives that everyone else is embracing?
