October 2009 Archives
OK its taken a while to get around to a second post on the Cloud Computing Summit One thing that came up again and again is the
definition of “Cloud Computing”. I was getting so bored with the definitions that it took a while for the penny to drop. It was Anais Nin’s quotation
“We see the world not as it is but as we are”
which I use frequently that underlined it for me. All the various vendors are looking at it from their view of the world. See this diagram for what I mean.
To a greater or lesser extent Amazon are following Microsofts old approach, called Developers and espoused here by Steve Ballmer
If anyone needed any more convincing that Amazon is a Software Company there you go. They see the world from the perspective of Software Developers. And they aren't tied to the existing legacy framework that Microsoft are embedded in. So while Microsoft have been worrying about Google, Amazon have carried out a flanking attack, not deliberately aimed at Microsoft but its had that effect.
Next piece of the puzzle. In an excellent defintion of Information and Understanding Richard Saul Wurman said
“To comprehend information…. you must uncover the structure or framework by which it is or should be organised; you must relate the information to ideas that you already understand”ave Snowden quoted Mary Douglas in more depth on this idea
Richard Saul Wurman “Information Anxiety
So Organisations see things in relation to how they understand the world and how they experience the world. Underlying this point is something I came across from Dave Snowden at Cognitive Edge. He is quoting Mary Douglas (in an very important book)
it seems that whatever we perceive is organised into patterns for which we the perceivers are largely responsible...
As perceivers we select from all the stimuli falling on our senses only those which interest us, and our interests are governed by a pattern-making tendency, sometimes called a schema. In a chaos of shifting impressions each of us constructs a stable world in which objects have recognisable shapes, are located indepth and have permanence.
As times goes on and experience builds up, we make greater investment in our systems of labels. So a conservative bias is built it. It gives us confidence
Mary Douglas Purity and Danger 1966
Quoted by Dave Snowden Cognitive Edge
So we are biased to see things in certain ways and how organisations are structured reinforces our biases.
Amazon Developers From a software development perspective. Small Teams
Google Consumers "to make it simpler for people to share information and get things done together."
Microsoft Business see microsoft.com
IBM Big Business Left as as exercise :-)
Each approach is a competing philosophy of how this new enviroment will work and how it should work. The vendors (particularly IBM and Microsoft who have the most to lose here) would like to lock you into their view of the world and like to lock your systems and products and processes and services in there as well. (Not much has changed there I guess).
What's missing here is what is the customer view of the world. I think the vagueness of the Cloud and even the usage of the word cloud reflects that.
Of course there is Larry Elisons take on "Cloud Computing"
Its a funny rant and it conceals much that is changing. Amazon is proving that
