Mitch Wheat - Treat the cause, not the symptoms!

Being something of a Luddite, I have yet to get my head fully around the cloud business model: is it simply a hyped technology or is this the future of computing? Call me an old cynic but it seems that it is more to do with a push to a licensing revenue model than meeting an actual business demand. The major software vendors have been fully aware for over a decade that there comes a limit to what a customer is willing to pay for upgrades that don’t really give them anything they need.

It’s certainly an interesting time. But does it make sense to be making the shift to cloud based computing? Mobile applications syncing to remote location are hardly new wiz-bang technology. High availability and auto-failover I can understand but scalability is perhaps a little harder…

Azure is a relatively recent entry into the cloud offerings, and as such there are no doubt a few fine details to work out. According to recent information, SQL Azure is not yet ready for:

• Large OLTP/DSS systems
• Tier 1, mission critical apps

Now while there is obviously something to be said for getting into a new market by starting small, one would have thought that the businesses that would most benefit from the cloud’s economy of scale and find it a cost effective, and therefore attractive, proposition would be precisely those with large OLTP systems.

On a side note, I also can’t help notice that the current price of data transfer is 3 times more expensive in Australasia/Asia (this will hopefully change?):

Data transfers = $0.10 in / $0.15 out / GB - ($0.30 in / $0.45 out / GB in Asia)*

So I guess I’m waiting for someone to show me the light and help me grok the cloud. Anyone?