Evolution and Revolution
From the outside any observer would easily think that the IT industry is a string of revolutions, each distinctly new , different and unique in its own sense. Little does an outsider know that it is actually just one long evolution cycle. The confusion comes in when a set of technologies and usage scenarios that have evolved largely in their own domain are put together to provide a bigger benefit and given a marketing name.
One way of identifying this stage in the evolution cycle is when established vendors start renaming or re-branding existing products and offerings to all of a sudden be part of the revolution. Oracle is probably the best example, during the Grid “revolution” tagging multiple Oracle offerings to be Grid offerings without changing much in terms of functionality, just look out for all the “G”’s attached to Oracle product releases : Oracle Launches Grid Database (eWeek)
I am sure the marketing department now regrets this decision as the Grid concept has yet to move to mainstream adoption outside the technical computing domain where workloads are well suited to Grid processing. A large set of new commercial business applications that suite grid style deployment have just not materialized.
The latest revolution is Cloud Computing, with just about every technology space jumping in on the term not to miss out on the hype going around. Wonder if we will see all the Oracle “G” versions change to “C” to adapt with the times. Oracle 12C in the making ?
Cloud Computing is a culmination of various technologies and compute models thrown into a melting pot of marketing. Software as a service (SaaS), Infrastructure as a service (IaaS), Platform as a service (Paas), Utility computing, Grid computing, Virtualization you name it and it is in there.
This is where the interesting part comes in, these revolutions are marketed as if it is the golden answer to any organizations challenges in deploying an IT infrastructure. For the most part ignoring the fact that most organizations have a large investment in their current infrastructure, likely based on a revolution from just a few short years back. For a moment lets say we can jump on Cloud Computing for our entire infrastructure due to its overwhelming benefit. Surely it is a mature concept and technology. The concept of Cloud Computing under this term is only about a year old, not mature at all , although some of the underlying technologies and concepts have been for years.
Here also lies the answer in how to best approach the revolution in the industry in a more methodical, long term view. As any of these revolutions are based on mostly existing concepts and technologies put together under a new term, assessing the applicability for an organization, infrastructure or application area in terms of more mature offerings is an achievable goal. Much more achievable than chasing a term that is drawn in all directions by vendor marketing campaigns. For example lets have a look at the relative age and inferred maturity of some of the components lumped under Cloud Computing :
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