This post sponsored by the Enterprise CIO Forum and HP.

The Cloud.

We all know about it.

We are probably all tired of every blog talking about the Cloud.

Some call the Cloud a fad. Some call it the trend of the future. Others…call the Cloud reality.

So which is it… Trend, fad or reality?

All three. Yes…all three.

In a recent post titled Cloud, a trend, an opportunity or a must?, HP‘s Chief Technologist Christian Verstraete writes:

…the business is looking to become more agile and responsive and this is particularly important in the current, volatile, market environment. To do that, companies should have a better understanding of their marketplace, customers, competition, partners etc. And obviously they want to do that at lower cost while freeing up as much capital as possible. So, the CIO is confronted with a need to respond faster to ever changing requirements while providing an increasingly flexible infrastructure. And that is where cloud comes in. It provides the required infrastructure at lower cost…

Great paragraph that. The last sentence is one that many people might argue with though…although I’m not one of them.

The Cloud is a trend. We are moving toward a more robust, agile, “not here” infrastructure.  The cloud gives IT & organizations the opportunity to move, grow, react and deliver. The cloud is a trend just like computers were a trend when they first hit the business world…and that trend is still being ridden.

The Cloud is a fad.  We’ve heard about things like the cloud before. Those things that are going to “change IT forever”.  I don’t know how many meetings I’ve sat through  where’s I’ve heard “this is the next big thing”. Rarely…have those ‘next big things’ really been just that.  The cloud is a fad just like the computer was a fad when the first hit the market. Fad’s often morph into reality.

The Cloud is Reality. Yes…the cloud is here to stay.  But…let’s stop talking about it being the ‘next big thing’. The Cloud is simply another option for infrastructure for an organization. The cloud is here to stay…in a few years time it will be called ‘off-premise infrastructure’ or something…but its here to stay.

As Mr. Verstraete writes:

Cloud is there to stay, it may be called differently in the future, but the fundamental concept of running services on flexible environments owned either by the company or by service providers is a given.

Well said.

This post sponsored by the Enterprise CIO Forum and HP.