We’ve been so busy lately that time has become just a blur. When I went to post today, I found it’d been a month since the last blog entry. Ouch! Today, however, a recent article got me typing.

Recently, Larry Ellison, CEO and founder of Oracle, got a lot of press when he ranted that cloud computing is nothing more than a “fashion trend.” I can certainly understand the frustration he’s expressing. First the blogoshpere and later vendors started stretching the definition so they could label everything as cloud, draping themselves in the latest haute couture.

Having been in the infrastructure business for a couple decades, though, I’ve always found IT folks aren’t fashion conscious. They’re a pragmatic lot, and used to cutting through marketing noise. Anyone in IT for more than a couple years has lived through the hype cycle getting, and learned to dig through to what’s real. Perhaps it’s not surprising then that cio.com’s recent IT survey shows IT leaders find cloud computing promising and are putting it on their roadmaps in greater numbers. The survey suffers a bit from the broad definition of cloud computing, but there’s substance in there as well that makes it worth a read.

What should we make of this contradiction? Is cloud computing just a fashion trend? IMHO, vendors with real product can easily get caught up in the hype cycle. Trying to keep up with a barage of announcements as major companies rebrand old products and VC’s throw money at slide decks can easily distract you from the real issues. IT pros aren’t responding to the cio.com survey because it’s a fashion statement, they’re reacting because they have real needs that aren’t being met. They see cloud computing as a potential solution to those needs based on what they can discern from available products and services. At 3tera, as we work to deliver cloud computing, it’s useful to see that IT pros continue to seek technilogical leverage to solve real issues. It’s that fact we have to keep in mind going forward – rather than worry about the latest fashion trends.