They Used to Say "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM"
January 28, 2011 - by badnima
The old adage in Corporate IT held that nobody ever got fired for buying IBM. That might not hold true anymore, at least as far as cloud computing, according to this article in TechTarget. It's worth the read if you're getting into or just want to learn more about the cloud computing market.
The first lessons is that if you try to be everything to everyone, you'll probably miss the mark altogether.
Analysts and customers say the company’s vast array of products is often a hindrance to its ability to focus on simple, useful cloud offerings.Which self-admittedly, is exactly IBM's problem:
"If you just look at our [cloud] output, it's like trying to read tea leaves," says David Parker, vice president of cloud marketing at IBM.Which brings us to the a perfect example of the underlying problem:
Thus IBM’s attempt to push its huge software portfolio in a cloud engagement falls on deaf ears, said Randy Bias, CEO of cloud consulting firm Cloudscaling. For instance, IBM Tivoli sells an inventory management software product to manage complex, heterogeneous environments. But designed correctly, he said, every rack in a cloud system looks exactly the same. A proper cloud environment has few vendors and standard systems.
The promise of the cloud should always be 1) simplicity, 2) performance, 3) cost and 4) elegance. The fourth point is actually my favorite. An elegant cloud is one that's approachable, anticipates your needs and just works. Deploying a cloud should be equally elegant -- simple software, one type of server, one type of switch, infinitely scalable.
Besides this analogy, what other products can you think of that meet these criteria? Japanese cars? Apple's iconic iPad? Timex watches?
Photo by NASA via Wikipedia.
