15 Ways to Tell Its Not Cloud Computing

Okay, so I hope this list speaks the truth about the “cloud” because several of my concerns or conundrums were alleviated after I read this post by James Governor on Red Monk. Namely, these items:

If you need to send a 40 page requirements document to the vendor then… it is not cloud
If you need to rearchitect your systems for it… Its not a cloud.
If you need to specify the number of machines you want upfront… its not a cloud.
If it only runs one operating system… its not a cloud

Basically, in my (only) few weeks of researching cloud server options, I couldn’t get my head around how complicated this whole process is/will be. So, not needing a 40-page reqs doc is a huge relief. Also, I had thought that one of the main advantages to the cloud, among many, is scalability, so number 3 above made sense and was a nice confirmation. Numbers 2 and 4 above are related for me. We have some software, data, etc. stored on remote servers at the moment because they can’t run on our Linux servers. So, I was hoping to move everything to the cloud but a colleague told me: “Oh, but we’re getting a Linux server in the cloud.”

It seems from this article that you shouldn’t have to choose an OS at all but tell the provider/vendor what you have and they should accommodate somewhere “in the cloud.” Which makes sense, right? Or why would anyone even be thinking of moving into the cloud? It’s the only way I can see IAAS (Infrastructure As A Service) working…