IT Analyst Dan Kusnetzky Talks about Cloud Computing and Cloud Hype (Video)

Dan Kusnetzky and I started out talking about cloud computing; what it is and isn't, how "cloud" is often more of a marketing term than a technical one, and then gradually drifted to the topic of how IT managers, CIOs, and their various bosses make decisions and how those decisions are not necessarily rational. What you have here is an 18-minute seminar about IT decision-making featuring one of the world's most experienced IT industry analysts, who also writes a blog, Virtually Speaking, for ZDnet.

Comments

I'm dumbfounded

[Anonymous Coward]

With all the articles on flash security and users tracking, I find it amazing that slashdot of all places would force is on its audience.

18 minutes - who has that kind of time?

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

i.e., WTF is the transcript link at?

Re:18 minutes - who has that kind of time?

[gbkersey]

(Transcript for this video is delayed. We'll post it as soon as we have it in hand.)

Re: The Cloud?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well the bobs said you have 1 week to train your h1b1 replacement

Here is a little piece of wisdom from an older one

[Anonymous Coward]

If it's called "client/server architecture", then it's probably okay. If it's called "cloud", then it's shit.

Oh, by the way, I haven't watched the video.

The most important fact to know .......

[sgt_doom]

....about cloud computing is that Deutsche Borse is opening a Cloud Exchange, in a few months, to essentially commodify cloud computing, which would allow the same activities to take place as those oil/energy and other commodity exchanges: speculate prices upwards, various financial manipulation, etc.

http://www.engadget.com/2013/07/04/deutsche-borse-to-open-cloud-exchange/

The super-rich want to extract every last drop from us, including exerting control over the Web.

Re:The most important fact to know .......

[mechtech256]

You honestly think that's the result of a commodity exchange? Lots of PC components are commoditized, like RAM/Flash and practically all of the cheaper components like voltage regulators. Deutsche Borse doesn't want to further a conspiracy, they want to make some profit from transaction fees. As for the actual premise, that's pretty interesting! For one, that would mean that all systems on the market would need to be interoperable. As in one day you could buy your cloud power from one provider, and the next day you could put up a bid and get it filled by another who would do the exact same job on the same code, transparently. This would be impossible for the major players in the cloud market as they're all on vastly different platforms and can't take the same jobs. Either the announcement is sensationalized and it won't actually be a "commodity" exchange, or it's going to be a fairly empty market.

Cloud computing?

[KingofGnG]

What is cloud computing? Simple: lies, lies and bullshit. That's all. http://kingofgng.com/eng/2013/07/10/the-many-lies-of-cloud-computing/

Don't reference Dilbert. If you must, get it right

[they_call_me_quag]

I stopped watching after three minutes.

The first two minutes were like "Cloud computing for kindergartners". In minute three he referenced a Dilbert comic, which is bad. He got the reference wrong, which is even worse. (Here's the comic in question for anyone who still cares about Dilbert: http://dhansen.cs.georgefox.edu/~dhansen/Classes/DBMS/sqldb.gif)

Perhaps this fellow had some brilliant stuff to say in minutes 4-18.... perhaps not.

Re:Don't reference Dilbert. If you must, get it ri

[Anonymous Coward]

http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1995-11-17/

Re:Don't reference Dilbert. If you must, get it ri

[Anonymous Coward]

I stopped watching after three minutes.

I got to 8 minutes because they reminded me of the two old guys in the stalls from the Muppets (there's no content before the 8min mark either).

Cloud is nonsense

[Anonymous Coward]

See here:
Link

worthwhile 18 minutes

[Anonymous Coward]

if you want to sell or market cloud services in any way, this is a good interview. thanks!

XKCD reference?

[Demonoid-Penguin]

Funniest cloud joke I could find :D

Man reveals the simple truth about Cloud Computing!
Marketing and Sales hate him.

I wonder is one of his "major" clients enjoys his sense of humour...

The cloud

[sjames]

all you need to know

Re:The Cloud?

[swalve]

They are called lesser INCLUDED charges. They are a part of the initial charge. I've known this since before the trial started; if Zimmerman and his lawyers didn't they are the only ones to blame.

i hope you improve the audio

[Anonymous Coward]

If you transcribe it as it was recorded, it'll be in light-grey on white.

My Favorite Dilbert Cloud Strip

[Dareth]

Dilbert Cloud Strip

Re:The Cloud?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm white and nowhere near Florida, but if I did live in Florida and that fucking redneck gets away with it I'd riot too.

Some moronic fuck driving around "patrolling the hood" with a gun, gets out of his car and starts shit with someone just walking along the street, rightfully gets the shit beat out of him and so kills the guy? And has the balls to call it self defense?? Its a fucking joke. That redneck piece of shit needs to rot in fucking jail.

Re:Don't reference Dilbert. If you must, get it ri

[bigtech]

Nailed it with the Dilbert comic. I mean *nobody* jumped on the SQL database bandwagon fad.

a bit harsh.

[Fubari]

So far, posts are being a bit harsh.
The only serious criticism I would offer is they chose the wrong audience for an interview like this: I suspect slashdot is more about practicing technologists & hobbyists, Kusnetsky's observations seemed like they'd be more useful to CIO-level, enterprise architects, or perhaps non-techies that need to cope with clouds.

I thought Kusnetsky made some useful distinctions; "cloud = buzzword marketing" vs. "cloud what's different", and who in reality is actually doing cloud things. Kusnetsky was also concerned about how to measure what people are actually doing at an industry level; I thought that was interesting, since (as a practitioner) I tend to focus on specific projects, one implementation at a time. *shrug* they're looking at the "cloud thing" from a different perspective than I do, which I thought was interesting.

r.e. the Dilbert Example (remembered: Dilbert: "Do you want red or blue database?" vs. actual (dilbert: "What color do you want that database?" Boss: "I think Mauve has the most ram."), it was a fine point - it got the idea across (e.g. sometimes management runs with trade-magazine fads without understanding it), even if he didn't correctly quote canonical Scott Adams.

execution: the sound was rough, especially bad on the interviwer's side (very hard to understand what Roblimio was saying). That made it harder to watch than it needed to be. I probably won't recommend this video to anybody because the content was rough enough it wasn't worth trying to sift through and find gems of ideas... maybe the transcript will be better.

Re:a bit harsh.

[kievite]

Compare with

http://www.softpanorama.org/Skeptics/IT_skeptic/it_obscurantism.shtml

Abstract

Nicholas Carr's provocative HBR article published five years ago and subsequent books suffer from the lack of understanding of IT history, electrical transmission networks (which he uses as a close historical analogy) and "in the cloud" software service provider model (SaaS). He cherry-picks historical facts to fit his needs instead of trying to describe real history of development of each of those three technologies. To be more correct Carr tortures facts to get them to fit his fantasy. The central idea of the article "IT does not matter" is simply a fallacy. At best Carr managed to ask a couple of interesting questions, but provided inferior and misleading answers. While Carr is definitely a gifted writer, ignorance of technology about which he is writing leads him to absurd conclusions which due to his lucid writing style looks quite plausible for non-specialists and as such influence public opinion about IT. Still as a writer Carr comes across as a guy who can write engagingly about a variety of topics including those about which he knows almost nothing. Here lies the danger as only specialists can sense that that "Something Is Deeply Amiss" while ordinary readers tend to believe his aura of credibility emanating from the "former editor of HBR" title.

Unfortunately the charge of irrelevance of IT made by Carr was perfectly in sync with the higher management desire to accelerate outsourcing and Carr's 2003 HBR paper served as a kind of "IT outsourcing manifesto". And the fact that many people were sitting between chairs as for the value of IT outsourcing partially explains why his initial HBR article, as weak and detached from reality as it was, generated less effective rebuttals then it should. This paper is an attempt to provide a more coherent analysis of the main components of Carr's fallacious vision five years after the event.

If one looks closer at what Carr propose, it is evident that this is a pretty reactionary and defeatist framework which I would call "IT obscurantism" and which is not that different from "creativism". Like with the latter, his justifications are extremely weak and consist of one hand of usage of fuzzy facts and questionable analogies, on the other putting forward radical, absurd recommendations ("Spend less", "Follow, don't lead", "Focus on vulnerabilities, not opportunities" and "move to utility-based 'in the cloud' computing") which can hurt anybody who trusts them or, worse, tries blindly adopt them.

The irony of Carr's position is that for the five years since the publication of his HBR article local datacenters actually flourished and until 2008 had shown no signs of impeding demise. In 2008 credit crush hit data centers hard, but they are just collateral damage of the financial storm. From 2003 to 2008 Data Centers experienced just another technological reorganization which increased role of Intel computers in the datacenter including appearance of blades, as alternatives to small to midrange servers, virtualization, wireless technologies and distributed computing (clusters). Moreover while there was some trend to the consolidation of datacenters within the large companies, the new power of laptops make "in the cloud" services promise pretty fuzzy as in no way remote datacenter can provide the same amount computer power as modern laptops. While perfect for such services as email, and (to lesser extent) Web browsing and in general, media consumption (which success of iPad demonstrated so vividly), for any computationally intensive application (for example, spreadsheets) promise of cloud computing become much less attractive, unless what we mean under the term is "application delivery". Security issues related to the move to private cloud are mindboggling. In May 2012 IBM has forbidden its employees from using cloud-based services such as Siri, Dropbox and iCloud.[IBM