Gnu Guru- "Cloud Computing is a Trap"

The Guardian has an article about Richard Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation and creator of the computer operating system GNU, feelings about cloud computing and they aren't warm and fuzzy. "It's stupidity. It's worse than stupidity: it's a marketing hype campaign," he told The Guardian.

I'm not going to venture that far out but I would have to tend to agree with Stallman for the most part. The cloud is a lot of hype right now. It is ASP marketing regurgitated in my opinion. This is an area I have watched and researched and tried to adopt now for many years.

We have a few hosted applications at my organization mostly HR and Payroll but critical line of business apps the data and machine stays in our data center. Yeah payroll sounds kind of critical but if the system goes you can always write a paper check locally.

Personally I am not too keen on paying someone for something (storage, email, etc) that I am already getting pretty much for free on my local machine or with free Internet applications like Yahoo Mail or Gmail.. Some of the Cloud OS projects like Microsoft Live Mesh, G.h.o.s.t., and Icloud, while compelling just aren't ready for prime time yet.

You can check out the article at the below link:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/sep/29/cloud.computing.richard.stallman

Computerworld has written an article citing community bloggers comments on Stallman's opinions here:

http://blogs.computerworld.com/rms_hates_cloud_computing_says_you_should_too

Greg Ness posted in his blog that the Cloud needs a new Infrastructure 2.0 before it is a reality and also discusses the Virtualization hype. It is a must read article here:

http://gregness.wordpress.com/2008/09/30/the-cloud-will-need-infrastructure-20/

Finally Gartner recently released a good articel entitled "Why a Little Cloud hype might be useful" that is a must read at:

http://blogs.gartner.com/hypecyclebook/2008/09/30/why-a-little-cloud-hype-might-be-useful/