Disruption by clouds is cloudy

Well, it has been a while, hasn't it.  I do find it interesting that future disruptive technologies mentioned in my Oct 2008 blog are still developing.  Some have come a long way and I will talk about those.  Today I want to mention number 8: Cloud computing is replacing the world’s data centers.

Well, is it or isn't it?  Data Center consolidation is certainly moving forward rapidly in the government area as this action has large potential costs savings to the various agencies, especially those agencies that have grown to mammoth size through congressional mergers of agencies; Homeland Security comes to mind here.

But we don't see as much movement to the cloud yet.  There are some agencies starting to move in this direction and GSA is making an effort to provide a contract vehicle that would allow government agencies to acquire cloud services.  But, security in an open cloud environment is still an open question.  Private clouds developed by the larger agencies may be able to solve that problem, but at the expense of acquiring and maintaining all the equipment necessary for such a large enterprise effort, reducing the savings potential.  

The issue of security is the major drag on open cloud computing.  Concerns about where your data is, e.g., is it in China today, and maybe Russia tomorrow?  People are addressing these issues through geo-restrictions and data encryption, but cloud providers are not generally providing these technologies as part of their cheaper offerings.