Cloud computing may be the topic on the lips of a lot of enterprise IT decision makers, but the adoption is going to be a more gradual process than vendors want us to believe.
This was the assertion of John McHugh, vice president and chief marketing officer (CMO) at Brocade, during his keynote speech at NetEvents 2010.
"Cloud computing... is overhyped right now," he claimed, "and is going to get adopted and embraced much more slowly that people believe."
McHugh outlined his "ideal state" of what cloud computing should be for a business, being able to have a number of vendors to call on for extra capacity when you need it and having full confidence in their service level agreements.
"[But] that vision is probably 10 years or more away," he said.
The next few years will have a cloud flavour, claimed McHugh, but it will be inside the business, not outside.
"What is going to happen is extended private clouds... work with one provider to develop a customised private cloud [but] inside a metal cage."
He concluded: "We just don't [in 2010] have technical, legal and security [ability] to engage fully with cloud."
