Rant - Grrr Cloud

OK I’ve just got to say it... What is it with these people and “The Cloud”?!
Anyone who reads this blog, yes both of you, (hi Mum) knows that the Cloud as a networking concept has existed for decades. It’s only recently that it’s become a fashionable marketing accessory.

(That’s a joke BTW, there’s no way my Mum reads this blog.)

The Cloud is a conceptual hook to represent a large network... Often the internet. It’s an umbrella concept used to simplify the complexities of large networks, similar to what the concept of Traffic is, to Cars and roads. Basically it’s a mental get out of jail free card “Don’t worry about that bit it’s in the Cloud.”

I can show you network diagrams from the 90s that use clouds to represent large networks and the internet.

So now finally the rest of the world is catching on to the concept. But that bugs me! I see all these sales, marketing and management people carrying on about how wonderful the cloud is going to make everything... Do they realise they’re using a synonym for “the Internet”?

There’s nothing new in these “Cloud Services” certainly nothing you couldn’t achieve with a couple of big data centres’ and some clever scripting. But that’s the rub, that’s all we’re seeing from Cloud Platforms... Put your stuff in a data centre and run some clever scripts on it. It’s primarily just marketing Bollocks and it annoys me.

Some bright spark (probably Eric Schmidt) has coined a term to hook public interest in internet services by giving it a cool name.

So anyway I’m now gunna get back to scripting my documents to synchronise with a FTP server hosted offshore. Probably quicker to say I’m “Clouding” my stuff.