Comments on: What will be the Business Model for the Cloud as Data and Content Storage Becomes a Utility?

By: Kris Walker

Kris Walker — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 14:10:51 +0000

There is a good discussion going on regarding use cases for the cloud. It has been initiated by the Open Cloud Manifesto group, but everyone in the industry should be taking part in these discussions:
http://groups.google.com/group/cloud-computing-us...

By: Bill Ives

Bill Ives — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 13:55:50 +0000

John – I agree on the regulation front for the Web. I hope that the increased market sensitivity that SaaS is subject to, and you point out, will empower users to enforce actions for the greater good. I do think that are some areas like access to WiFi we have moved to slowly by letting the major private players have too much say. Getting the cloud and wifi right in the US will be a major contributor to our long term economic success and all members of our economy, large and small. Paual – Thanks for pointing out my error on Traction. Too much rush to post and not good fact checking on my part. I made the correction. Bill

By: Bill Ives

Bill Ives — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 22:14:33 +0000

Paula Thanks for the correction on Traction. I should have checked directly after we talked. The consequence of rush to post. John – I agree with the regulation issue in principle for the Web and hope the increased market sensitivity that SaaS has, and you pointed out, will provide the market regulation needed. In my own work as an individual it was the desktop that failed first but that was my own fault for not providing a backup. Now I have continuous backup. We also need to do a better job getting wifi everywhere. Intuitively this is where the public sector might play a role but I have not looked deeply into this issue so I may be missing some "gotchas' here.

By: Rotkapchen

Rotkapchen — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 21:34:35 +0000

Bill: There are some great first-hand findings in here that you've used to 'season' the story. While I'm familiar with Spigit and have interacted with them, I did not have the great info about the SaaS predominance for their markets. That said, Traction is NOT SaaS-based. They do not maintain server farms and indeed shun doing so. Their software loads on any machine. I believe they do so well because they offer something that requires context-relevant immersion to truly understand its potential — so they readily make their software available to do that (unlimited starter license is free for 5 logins/ 5 spaces) .

I'm looking forward to your next piece and will be leveraging the various implications of the 'utility' model as well. Thanks.

By: John Abbott

John Abbott — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 19:08:20 +0000

I sincerely hope that the clouds never become regulated. Once regulation begins on the Internet it will find no stopping point. Since the clouds are all subscription I would hope that the loss of clients (revenues) will be enough to keep them from becoming evil.

I expect to see desktop software that will diversify the use of clouds. Keeping the mission critical spread out to prevent loss of productivity should a cloud go down. The Linux group seems to be on that path and it appears to work well.