Cloud Computing is the New Black

I am at the Virtualization (and Cloud Computing) conference in Manhattan and was here to meet with the cloud computing Czar from HP and 3tera, Right Scale, vKernel and others and had a chance to walk the intimate expo floor and see what vendors were doing. The thought that hit me was that Cloud Computing is the New Black.

The level of confusion that is out there is staggering - both on the marketplace side as well as the consumer side. I saw a fair number of the reveloving slide decks up on LCDs and they all felt compelled to define, yet again, what cloud is. To them.

For Rackspace the cloud offering is a service, for others an IT initiative to reduce costs, for others a chance to offer consulting services and for others it was all about the software solution they were pitching.

There were a lot of people trying to figure out what it was and my observation was that they were as confused when they left as when they got there.

One area that was not even discussed let alone on display was the cloud enablement, and I think it is more important than any one solution. What I mean by cloud enablement is a set of components that are already stitched together to facilitate the use of the benefits of compute on demand.

My metaphor that I have been using at CRG West is that we want to be Madison Square Garden not the performance that is using it as a venue. In other words vendors are focused on whether or not they want to be U2 or Stars on Ice, vs. the place where people (buyers) come to experience what it is they want to experience.

So we have started to build the new Madison Square Garden so when companies want the New Black, in whatever shade or size they need, we will be the place they come to experience it.