Dustin Amrhein

"What are the use cases you want to pursue with your enterprise cloud project?" The question seems innocuous enough, but I can tell you from first-hand experience that it is anything but. If you asked five people from different teams within the same company to each give you three use cases, you would end up with 15 different scenarios. Such is the case in the current enterprise landscape where points of view on cloud vary about as much as you can imagine. Each organizational fiefdom has its own set of pain points, challenges, and initiatives to tackle, and each one of those teams have an idea on how the cloud can help. Being on the service provider side, listening to users roll off a burgeoning list of usage scenarios is equal parts exciting and disconcerting. I find myself caught somewhere between, ‘Wow, that sounds cool and fun!', and ‘How am I going to show that... (more)

Should Developers Care About Cloud Computing?

It seems like just about every cloud computing discussion with a development audience results in the same question being asked: “Why does this matter to me?” As cloud computing first appears to be primarily an operational-centric paradigm, it is easy to understand the reason this is asked. This question can be answered in a variety of ways. Some may say that cloud computing doesn’t affect the developer in any way, while others will say developers need to totally revamp their skill set to cope with the new landscape proffered by cloud computing. The truth, as always, is somewhere ... (more)

Forget Defining Cloud Computing

Early Bird Savings for Cloud Expo Defining cloud computing has proven to be nearly impossible. Ask ten different people and you'll get ten different answers. Countless discussion groups, blogs, articles, etc. have attempted to give their own take on cloud computing, and all to no avail. The industry just can't agree on a common definition. With that in mind, perhaps it's time to move past trying to define the cloud and look into the common characteristics of such solutions. Many of us have heard or read about some of these cloud characteristics, so I thought I would offer up my t... (more)

Something You May Not Know About IBM and Cloud

Ask someone to associate IBM and cloud computing, and that person will probably come back with something about solutions to help build private clouds. I know because I ask... all the time. On the surface, this is a fair association. After all, it is true that IBM offers quite a few different solutions that help users to build both private clouds and on-premise clouds that they then offer up to others (i.e. enabling service providers). However, it does not participate in this cloud delivery model at the expense of other delivery models. In fact, IBM has a wide-breadth of cloud so... (more)

Delivery Models for PaaS Solutions

You know how we can tell PaaS is hot right now? We see vendors suffering from the same ‘me too' syndrome that we see with its parent, cloud computing. That is, it seems some players are all too willing to throw around the term PaaS in order to spunk up a press release or product announcement. I am sure this comes as no shock to anyone following the cloud industry -- just more examples of ‘cloud-washing.' However, just because some of us may be use to this type of wishful branding does not mean it is without negative consequences. From my conversations with consumers, it is clear... (more)