Avoiding the Storms: Why We Need Cloud Governance

by Tarak Modi, Principal Architect, G&B Solutions, Inc.

Yes, today’s forecast is scattered clouds.

In just a few short years, cloud computing has shown us that it is here to stay. If you have any doubts just take a look at the cloud taxonomy published by OpenCrowd where you will see close to 100 vendors offering up their wares including infrastructure, platform, or software-as-a-service, and supporting cloud software.

The U.S. Federal Government is busy setting up its own clouds, too. These include GSA’s Apps.gov, NASA’s Nebula, DISA’s RACE, and NBC’s Cloud as examples.

These are our scattered clouds today. Scattered clouds imply a nice day with mostly sunny skies and a few scattered showers. But don’t let today’s sunny skies lull you to a complacent afternoon siesta.

According to Gartner, the Worldwide Cloud Computing and related services market is expected to surpass $56.3 billion in 2009 and reach over $150 billion in 2013 . With so much at stake, we can expect many more clouds to start popping up in the skies. Such an unfettered increase in “scattered clouds” could mean that today’s sunny skies are just the calm before the raging storms arrive. …..

Every so often a truly “disruptive” technology comes along that has the potential of changing the way we do business. Cloud computing is such a technology that already has and will continue to create massive shifts in the role of the consumer and how service is delivered.

Ensuring that the benefits continue to outweigh the costs (or problems) is going to require very careful and deliberate cloud governance lest the clouds proliferate beyond control. Let’s not lose this golden opportunity we have to change the forecast from “thunderstorms ahead” to “clear and sunny skies forever.”  Article