Thursday, March 01, 2012

Has cloud lost its buzz?

After doing a presentation the other day I joked to someone from IBM that the WebSphere 'Cloudburst' appliance was one of the silliest names I'd heard.  An appliance that was tagged as cloud.  He then informed me that its not called that anymore but is now called the much duller, but more accurate, Workload Deployer.  Now I'm still not sure as to why this is a piece of physical kit rather than a virtual machine but its an interesting shift in marketing over the last few years that now people are taking the word 'cloud' OFF products.

Now this could be because the definition of cloud is now clearer and marketing departments don't want to confuse people, or (and more likely) its because cloud isn't seen as 'shiny' any more and therefore has lost much of its ability to entice clients.  In the later case shifting to a more prosaic name makes sense.

This would be a good thing as it means we've got beyond the peak of the hype cycle and are now getting towards cloud becoming an important technical approach but not being the solution to world hunger or having value as a 'badge' to slap on something to make it more attractive.

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