Burton Group: The Cloud Mystery Machine

In some situations, mysterious is cool. Pop culture often embraces certain entertainers because “they’re mysterious.” When it comes to cloud, some folks appreciate the fact that cloud is mysterious too. In several conversations over the past twelve months, I’ve heard some semblance of the following phrase uttered “All you need to care about is the application and the SLA.” Factors like physical infrastructure don’t matter. Or do they?

In 2010, we need to take steps to make the cloud less mysterious. If it’s less “cool,” then that’s a good thing, because that probably means it’s becoming a more serious platform for enterprise IT. However, if we’re going to get serious about cloud, a lot of work remains. The following posts highlight areas that I think should be points of focus in 2010:

more of the Burton Group post

Alex Carroll

Managing Member at Lifeline Data Centers

Alex, co-owner, is responsible for all real estate, construction and mission critical facilities: hardened buildings, power systems, cooling systems, fire suppression, and environmentals. Alex also manages relationships with the telecommunications providers and has an extensive background in IT infrastructure support, database administration and software design and development. Alex architected Lifeline’s proprietary GRCA system and is hands-on every day in the data center.