I worked in Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC or Digital as it was called) in the Vax VMS days – one might say this was an early incarnation of the cloud.  In fact at Digital there were many innovations that made it big later with other vendors making the big bucks.  Vax Notes was one that springs to mind.  All-in-One mail was another.  I guess one could write a blog post about how so many of todays innovations were incubated in one way or anther at Digital.  I am beginning to sound like an old man!  Back to today’s Cloud!

I got scared when our CFO wanted to transfer all her data and applications to the cloud – including our financials.  I knew the cloud had gone main street when a self confessed conservative CFO was making this request.  (I hope she is not reading this blog post!).

Here are a few of my recent experiences:

1. We moved much of our own infrastructure to a cloud solution over 2 years ago.  I must say I love that I do not hear the “servers” are down.  Love it!  However we were recently told that we will get migrated to the next upgrade sometime in the next 12 months – and can get no better definition on timeframe.  The version we are hoping to get migrated to is out over 12 months now for on-premise customers.  So much for instant updates in the cloud.  Another painful restriction is that none of our infrastructure customizations are permitted in this cloud yet.  Uugh!

2. We have a very large customer that has their own private cloud managed by their own central IT staff.  This company is a house hold name in IT circles.  They can not get the latest version of SharePoint loaded into that cloud with the new rules.  Uugh!

3. We have another customer that has a private cloud hosted and managed by another very reputable high profile supplier.  It would be easier for a camel to get through the proverbial eye of a needle than get that private cloud updated.  The time we are all wasting on not getting the upgrade done is sinful.  Uugh!

4. I have a CIO at a customer that wants to put all his infrastructure and servers into a cloud solution – but everyone is offering point solutions, so he’d end up with 14 “clouds” today.

In this early adopter phase, everywhere I turn the cloud is slowing us down and costing us money, despite the marketing message that says otherwise.

I know the “Cloud” is here to stay.  I am a huge fan.  We have been hosting BrightWork in the cloud since the SharePoint 2001 days.  We were there before it was called the cloud.  The full promise of the Cloud is a good way off yet.   But I need to re-learn patience!  But it is hard!