Having your IT on the cloud doesn't make it more flexible to dynamic requirements, more easy to integrate with some new innovative software, more adaptable to changing business requirements. This challange is and will not be addressed by the cloud architecture. It is addressed by the way you architecture your IT to support your processes regardless where it is hosted and as long we still strugle with the current monolithic and rigid architectures, we will continue to face the same challanges.

The cloud could probably will become a good infrastructure that might reduce TCO mainly from an hardware / network / infrastructure and operation point of view. Reducing TCO is a real value and as such should not be under estimated. But still the real competitve value doesn't come from just lowering the IT costs, as important that might be. We still have a long way to make our IT architectures open and adaptable enough to cope with the modern competitive landscape, be it on the cloud or elswhere.

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In my view, however, I'd rather compare desktops to 'unit drive' and Clouds to 'line drive', so it could arguable be used against the call for Cloud computing

Nonetheless, I like the idea of Cloud computing, as we all have individual experience with it: we have huge x-core processors in our notebooks with way-too-much RAM and video power, that we only occasionally use for the full 100%, e.g. when we're starting up Windows – it's just too bad that we've already paid for it all

However, in my opinion there are three major obstacles:

First, it's nice to be in the cloud, just as nice as having outsourced to a new datacentre, but it's a moneydevouring operation to get in or out of it, which adds little value if any at all. So we need what I call “no man's land” clouds where outsourcers, contractors and basically any operator can walk in and out of – past the security of course. If we have to switch from clouds every 5 to 10 years because a contract ends, it will seriously squeeze the fun out of Cloud computing

Second, it's fun to do business in the Cloud but while you're at it it would even more fun to do business across that same Cloud. I do think that, at least for the first dozen years, Cloud computing will add a certain “static state” to the apps in there, slicing off a good piece of flexibility. Great organisation and control over your apps can make up for that. Governance and service orientation by superb A2A integration will give you a good buffer for those years to come, and give a head start for the enormous spread of B2B and B2C Cloud computing -in my view- will cause

Third, public clouds are a bridge too far for many. We'll see private clouds, hybrid clouds, virtual clouds, up to the point that one could endlessly debate whether this particular cloud is “really a cloud” or just an ordinary data centre

But, I agree, we'll get there in the end, but not at that scale. Our current 'unit drives' have become just too relatively cheap to turn into dumb terminals