Outsourcing Leadership Blog

Are the Clouds Real or Fluff?

on Friday, 19 June 2009 14:15

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Categories: Information Technology

At the beginning of the 20th century, two great inventors, Thomas Edison and Henry Ford, changed the world. Both men enabled an industrial revolution that we are still receiving the benefits from today. But to me, it is not their inventions as much as the courage it must have taken to bring the innovation or process change to market them that is important. For example, Henry Ford created the assembly line, and with it, the capability of mass production. In short, he enabled the automobile to become a commodity and affordable to everyone. Edison did likewise with the creation of the electric utility; he improved the quality of life in the home and the commercial marketplace.

A key piece of information is that the two of them were lifelong friends and actually had adjoining homes in Florida. Initially, Ford generated his own electricity for the plants and kept a team of people to maintain the power-generating equipment. Can you imagine Thomas Edison explaining to Henry Ford that he should outsource his power generation needs to the Edison companies? Henry Ford was probably extremely concerned about relying on a third party to provide the energy needed to make his assembly lines function. History does not tell us the exact time and place when Ford and manufacturers like him outsourced their power needs to third parties such as the Edison companies, but we can safely say it worked.

For as many years as I can remember, the information technology industry has been using the example of the electric utility as the great IT equalizer. Now we have moved from the electric generator to the “cloud.” The cloud, we are told, has more flexibility. The promise: Cloud computing will do for the world what the assembly line did for manufacturing and the light bulb did for the quality of life.

I think, however, what we miss in this conversation is that these clouds need to support a business process or processes for industry and government entities alike. Cloud computing requires the same kind of care and an even greater degree of agility to support the innovative business processes of either a corporation or a public enterprise. Both must be able to grow and generate value over time to customers and citizens alike. In short, the provider community, the business community, and the third-party community need to deliver a cloud computing business model worthy of the promise, not just another utility model.

Joe Hogan
Managing Director, Alsbridge, Inc.

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