Cloud is not a destination. It is a new
and better way of doing things.
Seems like an inane question, right? How do you define cloud? Everyone knows what
cloud means, right? But think about it for a moment. Ever watch a business channel like
CNBC and see someone like Jim Cramer extol the greatness of a particular company’s
progress “in the cloud” and find yourself yelling at the TV? “That is NOT a cloud, that is
Cloud-washing!” you scream. Just me?
Or, have you had a conversation with a peer, client, partner or vendor and the topic ulti-
mately turns to cloud? How often have you discovered shortly into this topic, that when
they say cloud and you say cloud, you are not talking about the same thing? For us, it
seems like a daily occurrence.
In fact, we would wager that if you asked 100 Fortune 500 IT leaders to provide their
definition of cloud, a frightening number would describe something that could best be
described as a virtualized IaaS environment. Some of the more thoughtful answers
might include terms such as “multi tenant,” “infrastructure as code” and “automated
provisioning.” The point is that the overwhelming majority of those asked would likely
define cloud through a technological lens. Technology is, of course, essential to the defi-
nition of cloud, but it is not sufficient.
How to Think About Cloud
Before we get into defining cloud (and we will), it may be helpful to discuss how best to
think about it. Unfortunately, too many people think of cloud as a destination – to them,
it is a noun. More appropriately, cloud should be thought of as a verb. In other words,
cloud is what you do!
What do we mean by this? In practical terms, cloud is a different operating model for IT,
where infrastructure becomes code, functions become fully automated and both infra-
structure and application code are launched into live production environments without
the constraints of some ridiculous release window. Cloud is also a world where human
error and inefficiencies are virtually eradicated.
SUMMER 2019 | THE DOPPLER | 7