Your tech career depends on preparing for the cloud

To counter some of the responses on this thread, it's worth noting that not everyone believed in anything but dumb terminals, object-oriented development, relational databases.... etc. in times past, either. I'm not saying it's a certainty that "the cloud" will be like those and become a part of everyday life, but I wouldn't just write it off either. Ultimately, datacenters, servers, sustained engineering, support, etc. are all cost centers (although they do benefit the bottom line by enabling the workforce). "The cloud" is likely to become more prevalent as the consumerization of IT continues, and public organizations continue to work to find ways to cut costs. It's still early in the game, but I for one believe in the cloud becoming a fairly mainstream thing to find businesses trusting at least some of their critical business processes to. Given it can have fairly large cost savings in manhours and materials, it behooves one to at least give it a good, long thought. The almighty dollar / pound / euro / <insert currency here> is what I see as the driver of this technology.

I have to say that trusting the cloud with EVERYTHING is a huge risk and more scams will be created, also, why SHOULD people alter their careers to suit the cloud? Just another thing to worry about, another limit to what you can do on the internet, what a terrible idea. I hope it burns!

I'm gong to put my two cents worth about cloud computing. I don't like it and doubt that I ever Like like it. (At my age I've learned to never say never) But I don't see any reason why I will ever have to use it. I am retired and do not work for any cooperation. I have my own personal computer at home; and that's where I will save all of my data--at my home on my devices.

mr pc said:

What about natural disasters?

So if a big storm/earthquake/Were-Rabbit comes along and destroys the infrastructure - everyone is SOL with accessing their data for however long it takes to get things back and with hopes the Data center wasn't destroyed.

stupid reckless idea on so many levels

Not for CEOs (and their ilk).

In the event of a major disaster, they'll just "shut up shop" and "ride off into the sunset" with their ill-gotten gains.
Probably with big, fat performance bonuses to boot.
Of course the customers will be "so out of luck".

I've been developing software for 35+ years. In all that time I've seen several swings back-and-forth from localized computing/storage to attempts to centralize everything. To me the "cloud" is just another (albeit sophisticated) "central" or "time-sharing" computer model. Instead of being "document-centric" like the www is, it will be "application-centric" as well. It's just another attempt at moving control of things to the "center" where relatively few control the flow of data and the user "experience".

I can see some benefits to having centralized storage for some things - I use DropBox and a handful of other "web based" or "cloud" services but moving my computing and major storage needs off my own equipment? No, that just ain't going to happen. I can see where corporations might, at some point, want to trim costs (assuming the "cloud" is cheaper) by placing some of their infrastructure "out there", however I can't personally see why a corporation would be able to completely trust it. Hard to say.

The "cloud" is an interesting idea, not completely new though - just an old idea repackaged to fit the present state of the technology. I doubt I or many of my colleagues would place complete trust in it any time soon, if ever.

My 2-cents.

-Max