Nothing like a good old-fashioned reality check. McKinsey’s smack-down of cloud computing (at least for large, corporate companies) caused an e-ripple, so I’ll try not to retread old ground. Nonetheless, it was a refreshing, contrarian perspective that exacerabates the age of tension within the IT community, characterized by two camps: One, who views IT as a commodity; the other, who view IT as a tangible driver of business value. It’s as old as Catholicism vs. Protestantism; Ali vs. Holmes, etc.
Those who are unimpressed with cloud computing have a point. McKinsey, for example, argues that cloud proponents (ahem, the vendors) greatly exaggerate cost savings. History has shown that McKinsey is correct. Something like 75% of projects (OK, I kinda made that up, but trust your instincts on this one) are delivered either over-budget or over-time; why would that change, particularly when you’re considering a massive migration of core services to an external entity? What a mess!
What McKinsey simply said is “Listen, cloud computing may not be for everybody (particularly large companies.”) But given the responses by some of the posters on the NYTime’s site, you think they said, “There’s no such thing as Santa.” Some posters attack the credibility of McKinsey themselves, arguing their shills for their bloated corporate clients. And while that may be true, does that change the fact that cloud computing may not be for everybody? Grow up people!
