The hype around cloud computing is hard to ignore and as each vendor is trying to put the word "cloud" in front of all its products, enterprises are finding it extremely difficult to sift through the noise and really find which products work best specifically for their data center.
A strong minority of enterprise IT shops are prioritizing the development of a private cloud, but Forrester surveys suggest these moves will fail. The reason lies in the motivation behind these efforts and the focus. Most are building private clouds to keep their developers from going to the public cloud and are focused on the physical aspects of the cloud, not the operations - and it's the operations that make the cloud.
Experienced CIOs have learned the hard way that achieving tangible benefits early in the technology lifecycle is no easy matter--whether its OO, CMMI, ITIL or SOA. Cloud computing shows promise and demands attention, but the related hoopla needs to be tempered with a good dose of business sense. The cloud, regardless of its variety, should never be considered an all-or-nothing proposition.