Report from Cloud Camp at Java 1 and Cloud 101
A few weeks ago, I attended the Cloud Camp at Sun's Java 1 conference. I learned something that really surprised me about Cloud Computing that I'd like to share with you.
I entered the conference excited about sharing some of my experiences as a Cloud vendor, and hoping that those experiences would benefit others at the Camp. I'd already decided that I'd like to discuss "how to monetize your application in the cloud" as a topic, since so many of my customers ask me questions about this.
The Camp, being an un-conference, started out with the audience listing their questions and the moderator writing them down. Then the moderator asked any members of the audience if they had expertise to address the questions. I did, so I ended up on the panel answering questions. While there were many questions about Cloud Computing, most seemed to focus on deployment issues such as cost and security. Eventually we narrowed the questions needing more discussion down to a small subset, and broke up into groups to discuss them. Since I'd suggested monetizing your app in the cloud as a topic, it got the votes and I ended up moderating a discussion session with that topic.
However, we barely were able to touch the topic. Instead, almost every one of the 20 or so people in the group seemed to be more concerned about cost than revenue, even though the topic covered both. Some were upset at the cost of EC2 which they had been using. Others were confused about what "on-demand" means. Others didn't understand how they could predict their costs. And many just wanted to listen, frustrating my desire to have a stimulating conversation. Almost everyone was confused about exactly what "Cloud" meant. I ended up teaching a mini-class on how the choices they make end up resulting in the costs they have to pay for Cloud Computing, and what they can do to minimize cost.
This ended up pointing out to me that the Cloud industry has a problem. If customers don't know what the product is, and they have high expectations of it as a result of lots of advertising and hype and excitment, they are bound for disappointment, and vendors are bound to have a hard time making them happy. And the people at this Cloud Camp - unlike the geek-focus of prior Camps I've been to - were CTOs, Directors of IT, VPs of Technology and the like. And they were confused. If they didn't get it, how would COOs, CFOs, business owners, and entrepreneurs?
This resonated with me, since we founded ENKI on equality of power between us and our customers... in other words, a win/win paradigm. You can't have win/win if one side holds all the cards - or all the knowledge. So for the industry to move forward, we will need to educate the customers.
To this end, I'm creating a "Cloud 101" class that I will be presenting here in this space, and eventually as live sessions at local events in the Bay Area, as well as video segments on this site. The idea will be to present a vendor-neutral look at what Cloud Computing is, and how to use it successfully.
To continue with the un-conference format, I'd like to solicit suggestions from you on what you'd like to see in the class. My current straw-man syllabus is:
- The on-demand computing model and the pay-as-you-go billing that results from it.
- Is Cloud Computing less expensive than alternatives? How does it save you money?
- Reasons to choose Cloud aside from cost considerations.
- How to make money deploying your software to the Cloud?
- How should I write my software to run in the cloud?
- What are the differences between various Cloud technologies?
- Your topic here.
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