Why Cloud is Awesome, or "How come the rest of my life can’t be this simple?"

I purchased my house 16 years ago and replaced the major appliances when I moved in. But as time has moved on, my appliances have remained in the past. Some have even given up the ghost and have been replaced several times. Others are not as efficient as their newer counterparts and should be replaced. When my refrigerator broke down the other day, I had a dilemma. I have an eight-year-old fridge; do I repair or replace it? I decided to call the repair service to see what it would take to repair it. My first disappointment was hearing it would be 24 hours before a technician would show up. On Thursday morning, the repair technician showed up. After an hour of diagnosis and testing, I was informed it needed a part which he did not have on his truck and was not available locally. He informed me it would be available on Friday. I happily said “tomorrow is fine!”... and then was told "not tomorrow, next Friday".

If there was a “Fridge as a Service” (FaaS), I would buy it today. I could go grocery shopping and place my milk, eggs and butter in the cloud. I would never have to worry about whether they were at the right temperature or when the refrigerator broke down because the Service would store my groceries across multiple redundant units. I would have to come to terms with using a shared refrigerator, but the Service would make sure I would not get anyone else’s milk nor would they get mine.  But I also realize that those eggs and my butter came from a shared environment originally, so in the end they are not so special until I add my individual touch to them, like grandma’s cookies. That recipe and the product of that recipe is my intellectual property and I trust that my part of the FaaS is isolated from the other tenants, and no one else will eat my cookies. 

We are constantly looking for solutions to make our personal lives easier, but when it comes to business, we constantly look to throw up barriers to innovation. Cloud is a magic word that has been invented by some clever marketing folks to sell the service. In reality, Cloud is an architecture not a place, Cloud is just a fluffy term for "a computer somewhere else". 

Embrace Cloud and the “As a Service” model and watch your business flourish. Go back to your core competency and leave the other services to the experts.