Trusting the Cloud

Hundreds if not thousands of years ago a lesson was learnt that has allowed our species to become what they are today.  It seems though that when it comes to the cloud we find it very easy to not behave in this same manner and that could be holding us back.

Once upon a time our ancestors had to spend their entire day looking for food.  Even once they had learned to cultivate crops and animals it still pretty much took all their time to do this, and though this led to a self sufficient life it was essentially just a daily grind.  Eventually what happened was that some people concentrated on the role of providing food, allowing the others to focus on other "value add" occupations.  We suddenly had time away from the fields to learn other things and work to the good of the race as a whole.  This free time eventually lead to the development of computers and even to the Cloud.

Most of us nowadays are so used to this state of affairs we don't really think about what we still to this day trust the farmer to deliver for us.  Indeed sometimes people seem to look down on the role the farmer plays in our lives.  The truth of it is that if they stopped making the food we need available, we would all have to stop working on computers and find a way to feed ourselves.  Today trusting others is the natural way of things.  It doesn't stop with food either as we also trust other services to help to keep us alive for example removing our sewage; purifying our water; and providing power for heating.

Why then is it so difficult for us to trust in the Cloud?

Like food production, once we learn to trust the Cloud with the subsistence part of computing we will be free to explore other things, focusing on the business benefits and how we can deliver new things in effective ways.    Without this we will all still be chained to the yoke of commodity systems desperately hoping that we can find the time to add some value.