“Either you stand for something or you don’t”

Jack Ryan from the Tom Clancy novel Clear and Present Danger

Cloud Computing is real and seems to be growing rapidly. Cloud providers need the most energy-efficient servers they can get without compromising the features and reliability of traditional rack servers. That aspect of Cloud Computing seems to be, well, the least cloudy. It’s why AMD added the 40-watt ACP Quad-Core AMD Opteron™ EE processors to our server lineup earlier this year and plans to soon offer 40-watt ACP Six-Core AMD Opteron™ EE processors.

Since we launched our EE processors, I’ve tried to gain a better understanding of what Cloud Computing really is. Now, I’m not sure why, but that over-simplistic Jack Ryan quote kept running through my head as I recently read the latest f5 networks survey results on Cloud Computing. It asked 250 IT professionals what they thought of SIX possible Cloud Computing definitions. Before reading the results, I said to myself: Either you know what the Cloud is or you don’t. It should just be that simple.

Not so fast. There appears to be a thought leadership race among analysts, service providers and numerous other industry pundits to be the one who arrives first at the accepted Cloud Computing definition.

This “define the cloud” fascination seems to be reaching new levels. This week alone, I found more than 100 articles that discussed the topic of defining Cloud Computing on Google News. Does this mean we are near the “tipping point” on coming to a consensus, or are we further away than ever?

India’s CXO Today  just posted an Cloud Computing interview with an SAP senior executive, Simon Dale. Dale said “For now it is still a marketing definition with nobody having come out with a proper and complete description of cloud computing.” Great observation and it would be nice if the industry could actually land on even a single “marketing” definition of Cloud Computing.

The good news is that even without a widely-accepted definition, interest and investments in Cloud computing are undeterred, looking at f5’s survey results. More than 80 percent of the 250 IT professionals surveyed are now in at least trial stages of Cloud deployments, and more than half have deployed a public Cloud environment.

Now as a PR guy, I’m all for the discussion about defining Cloud Computing to rage on. Particularly if it drives attention to the fact that AMD is working hard to shave every watt it can off its processors without compromising the features such as AMD-V™ or AMD-P. While the definition remains cloudy, we continue to work to keep the benefits to customers clear.

 Phil Hughes is a senior public relations manager at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.