“Why cloud computing?” Always a good question

Recently, some people have asked “Why the cloud?” Often they are treated as witty. People who act as demon advocates are often set aside when offensive questions force others to justify the use of the cloud (or, for that matter, new technologies).

The results are better if anyone wonders why they are moving to the cloud. The reason is as follows.

Most of us in the tech community have some arrogance when we evaluate ourselves honestly. We move quickly to new technology trends such as cloud and edge, hoping that others will follow. We are surprised when they do not, or when they question the movement.

These trends are repeated in an infinite loop. Thirty years ago, we moved to minicomputing, then PC LAN, client / server, service-oriented architecture, and now the cloud. All these trends were greatly hyped and cost billions of dollars in marketing. Most companies are leveraging advertised technology to solve old and new business problems.

Some of those technologies were NetPlus. It was more net negative than we wanted to admit. Therefore, considering all factors, investing in technology changes did not result in ROI. I see these as misuse, not as a technical failure. In other words, not enough people ask “why”. In the middle.

Fast forward to 2021. Our past selves say it’s very good to ask our present and future selves “why the cloud”. The person asking deserves a logical and well-thought-out answer. So far, so good.