Well the vendor solutions are going nowhere and I don't think they are the issue either. We lack in quite a number of areas that I believe can be quickly and easilly addressed. This mailing list is probably doing quite a bit of awareness creation. People are out talking, I hope to soon see actual technical discussions, comparing value between vendor A and B and how to deal with specific measurable/actionable tasks. - Certification bodies for security, validated designs, business models etc. - Legal - we have issues here. Like which acts govern our data and how its handled? for instance is it alright for my credit card data to be stored 'abroad' by a bank? - Reliance on vendors for dimensioning almost always means you buy up more capacity than you need. So you price high to recoup your investment. Thats backward reasoning, I think the idea should be to generate more content even if it's just IP camera's generating tons of media data for someone else to work on algorithms to use it - thats an example, don't bash me, but you get the idea. - For the engineers you want to retain doing this, chances are very few companies will want to pay them the amounts they want to be paid. They end up leaving & working 'abroad'. - Cloud computing gives you layered portfolios. Visualizing this can be a pain to comprehend for even experienced users. How do you expect managers to work out how to package products in something they don't understanc. We need to start seeing workshops. Those intending to put up datacenters need to start educating the rest on how they can use their services. - put another way: Another challenge is changing how managers and project managers think about processes.Cloud computing breaks most of the models in use today for a service portfolio. If you are coming from ITIL/Prince2 school of thought, things get inverted in the 'cloud' area quite a bit. - As far as the business model, you start from the easiest service and build up. Its the best approach since you start making money as you build up. So start with the network as a service, then storage, then move on up the stack and automate as you move along. remember there is a learning curve for everyone. JGitau On Tue, Jul 12, 2011 at 9:39 AM, Phares Kariuki <pkariuki@gmail.com> wrote:

Sorry to hijack from the Open Data thread, but I think this has morphed into a topic on it's own.

The problem, in my opinion boils down to the following:

Dependence on vendor lead solutions - Yes, EMC/Cisco/VMware make a good combined and stable product but is it really the best placed product to run the platform you want? Is there necessary expertise for the same? People run for the vendor led solutions without enough expertise which means that consultants etc will run and maintain the system. Support contracts etc. End result? An unusually high cost for the service. SP's have not figured out the business model... It's not only about storage space and VM's. You need to be able to provide a stable platform. Requires input from devs... It's not that we don't have the expertise we have PRSP's that maintain their services, we have banks/companies etc that maintain their own mini 'internal clouds' to a high level of availability, maybe the question is how to get that expertise into the market.

-- With Regards,

Phares Kariuki

| T: +254 720 406 093 | E: pkariuki@gmail.com | Twitter: kaboro | Skype: kariukiphares | B: http://www.kaboro.com/ |

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