First, I just want to say that it’s a pleasure to be blogging for SiliconANGLE’s community.  I hope to pass on some of my insight and knowledge in hopes that you will read it and either put it in practice, challenge me, or simply make me see another point of view.

This past year has been quite chaotic in the technology industry.  After speaking to many IT executives throughout the year, it was evident that cloud computing was not about if, but when. Amongst the analyst/consultant and vendor community, there was much agreement/disagreement, theories, myths and half-truths about the definition of cloud computing.  Because of all this discussion, I don’t feel the need to define it; feel free to follow the twitter stream @clouderati, and make some sense of what is said in those discussions.  What I’d rather focus on is the direction in which I think this market will take in 2010.

As the controversy between private versus public cloud continues, enterprises have already adopted public cloud in some way, shape or form. Many of the IT executives I spoke with had dabbled with public, and were thinking about private for long term.  When I asked what the number one challenge was around public cloud, security was the (not so surprising) answer.  However, “enterprise ready” or not, public cloud is being used, whether it’s for some type of application development/testing, or for a specific business unit task (e.g. marketing launch) at hand.  

The fact is that the cost, in some cases, is hard to beat.  In most cases however, it’s not only cost, but the flexibility and agility of being able to spin up resources on demand, and just as quickly and efficiently, shut them off, when no longer needed.  No commitment, no contract.

The concept of private cloud on the other hand, is of course, more appealing to enterprises.  Because of the very nature of its name, it gives enterprises that comfy feeling that their data is safe and secure.   It’s the age-old enterprise mentality that if you lose control of your data, it’s not safe.  But it is what it is, and it hasn’t changed, when you think about any new technological transformation that has occurred in the last few decades.  That being said, the benefits of private cloud are many, including the “security”, manageability, governance and ultimately control that is still in the hands of an organization.

So which cloud wins?  I don’t really think that’s the question.  As we move into 2010, enterprises will want to use both; in fact, I would recommend leveraging the benefits of both, for different functions.  It’s about having the right combination of resources, and maximizing them. 

Each will have its own value to meet the unique needs of an enterprise.  Part of the value proposition in this hybrid cloud model will be in the ability to move data (seamlessly) from private to public cloud and vice versa.  However, organizations will struggle with interoperability between private and public cloud vendors.  I fear we will see the whole “it’s not my problem, it’s the other guy’s problem” scenario.  

My bigger fear is that traditional incumbent vendors are thinking that things will be done the way they’ve always been done. However, cloud computing changes business models and really doesn’t align with the traditional perception of one vendor takes all.

More forward thinking vendors will get this, and will forge unlikely but necessary partnerships to create new business models, which could potentially be revenue-sharing like scenarios.  In Surendra Reddy’s (@sureddy) recent post “Rethinking Enterprise Computing”, he makes a very keen observation, “this means supplier, manufacturer will soon cease, and instead become a buyer for the customer.”  This holds true for vendors in this market as well; those vendors who will be flexible enough to move with the needs and requirements of an enterprise will ultimately win.

What are your thoughts?  How do you think business models need to change for vendors? What is the right combination of public vs private cloud for enterprises?