For the past several years, we’ve been hearing about “The Cloud.” Before that, the same concept was called “Software as a Service” or SaaS. Prior to that, it was called “Application Services Providers” or ASP.
A rose by any other name smells just as good – or just as bad. Whatever it was called, the idea never really seemed to take off. Companies and individuals just kept resisting the urging of service providers to give up on-premise control of their data and applications, even if it did offer the potential to save money and headaches.
Microsoft, Google, Amazon and a number of other major players in the IT industry are now bound and determined to make it happen. And with that kind of money and influence behind it, the trend toward putting data and apps in “the cloud” is finally beginning to gain some momentum. However, based on my informal discussions with IT pros outside those big companies, there is still a pretty large and adamant resistance movement. In the parlance well known to anyone who has visited the Twelve Colonies, their attitude is “Frak the Cloud.”
The name might be a bit catchier than those that preceded it, but the image it conjures up for those IT professionals (and for many consumers, according to input from my newsletter readers) is not a friendly one. Rather, it’s the picture of a dark and ominous sky, filled with hidden tornados, ready to swoop down and wipe out everything they own. Am I over-dramatizing? Not really. Emotions about the cloud run strong. There are important trust issues at work. IT pros see it as a threat to their jobs, and home users see it as an attempt to wrestle away what control they have left over their data, their software and their computing experience.
Here’s what Kelly H. had to say:
“I’m quite leery of clouds as well, not because of the storms they produce, but because of how quickly they dissipate! One minute they’re there, and the next they’re gone–or at least changed somehow. I cannot see trusting my data to a cloud. (I don’t always trust my own computer!)”
A name change isn’t going to fix all that, but it might help.
Sure, it’s boring, but why not just refer to it as “online services?” Drop all references that make people think of big, scary storm clouds that obscure their views of their data and apps. “Online” is familiar, comfortable, a good thing. We all “go online” every day and we’re able to do enjoyable things there. “Going online” is a far happier idea for most people than “moving to the cloud.”
Last week, Steve Ballmer said Microsoft is betting its future on the cloud. If they’re really serious about selling it to everybody else, I think they should abandon that name, maybe even stay away from “services,” too, since for most of us that sounds like something we’re going to have to pay – and pay, and pay, and pay – for. It makes you think of your water bill or your electric bill, costs that keep going up and up and make you feel frustrated and helpless when you try to deal with the disinterested bureaucrats who represent those services to the public.
How about “the online software experience?” Or even use the “Live” moniker, which has nice connotations. Just quit talking about the cloud – and you’ll stop scaring away a good portion of your market.
