What If We'd Never Heard Of Cloud Computing?

But the other infrastructure cost that's high enough to get boardroom-level attention is retrofitting existing data centers, or building new ones to handle high power and cooling densities. Choosing a design that heads north of 100 watts per square foot, or looking for a facility that supports over 99.9% availability, starts to be a very pricey proposition. For many, the answer is going to be a hybrid model, but one that keeps systems under IT's control in advanced facilities that provide very high power and cooling densities and that have the redundant systems and disaster-proofing to offer a higher level of performance than most IT orgs could justify buying themselves.

In the same cloud poll cited above, 56% said that cloud computing for IT operations was also not applicable for them -- meaning they had little interest in using it. This, along with cloud for development, was by far the highest bucket of not applicable categories. Contrast that with outsourcing, which saw only 37% saying it didn't apply, and SaaS, where 47% said it didn't apply.

If the cloud fad had never entered our shared consciousness, I seriously doubt that the notion of buying cycles and bytes would have been considered by most organizations. And that brings me back to Vantage. What it's offering is physical facilities. Economically built and designed for efficiency, it's betting that you'd rather house some or all of your data center in a Vantage facility rather than incur the cost to create your own. It's a compelling argument, one that's akin to keeping your money and certain valuables in a bank because it’s safer and cheaper than attempting to build your own vault (let's face it, you'll never make enough on interest to compensate for your bank fees, so building wealth is no longer part of the rationale for using a bank).

I'm looking forward to visiting the Vantage facility, if nothing else than to learn how they've made density and efficiency economical in a facility that reaches over one-third of a million square feet.

SEE ALSO:

Top 5 Cloud Computing Predictions For 2011

With Cloud, What You Don't Know Can Hurt You

No One Owns 'The Cloud'

HP Takes On Amazon With Enterprise Cloud Services

IBM To Build Massive China Cloud Data Centers

NIST Issues Cloud Security Guidelines

Microsoft Names New Server And Cloud Chief

Top 10 Cloud Stories Of 2010