Is everyone's head in the clouds?

Are our heads really in the clouds? I realise that this is a term that comes up again and again and to be honest I think I agree with it. Don’t get me wrong I am a massive advocate of cloud computing, it is a real game changer and was the next level of innovation that the IT industry needed. Anyway back to the challenge, cloud computing is a great, great idea for vendors with massive compute power already on the web and providing internet services (Google, Amazon and Microsoft as examples). I could image someone in one of these enterprises at a senior level saying in response to a request for more hardware ‘what capacity are my servers running?’ when the answer came back that exact same exec shouting ‘how on earth has that happened? Oh hang on, how can I sell my spare capacity’?

And so cloud computing is born? There might even be a Dilbert on this. Which leads to the problem, if I do not have a compute infrastructure ready and willing to go how do I create my own cloud? I realise that for many organisations I can buy it in. But for some with paranoia around security (like government agencies, banks and financial institutions) this is not an option.

I know that the internal investment case is pretty hard for any organisation not willing to embrace the concept of ‘my data is in the cloud’ the cloud seems like a great idea, but at this moment in time a long way off.. Or is it.. I do think that the challenge is being risen to by the hardware vendors who are offering pay per click services which is helping.. From my experience it is the software vendors who are slow to catchup.. Without these two entities coming together it is difficult as the risk for lack of adoption falls with SI / outsourcing partners (like us)...