Cloud-based services have raised a number of red flags for CIOs from the outset, but two recent news items demonstrate a bait and switch in the sector. If enterprises are thinking twice about moving services to the cloud, the blame can be shared by Google (NASDAQ: GOOG), EMC, VMware and Salesforce.com, writes Savio Rodrigues at InfoWorld.
Google is partly to blame because of the pricing hike it announced for its App Engine cloud platform, Rodrigues writes. The company has a history of leaving products in beta even as they become widely used, and this is fine--and kind of fun--for consumers, but it doesn't work for enterprises. Not only is there a lack of service level agreement support for enterprises in the preview phase, but the pricing for the offerings once they are given "general availability" status is uncertain.
Getting used to an offering in beta under one pricing model only to be hit with a more costly and complicated one after it reaches GA mode creates unnecessary complications for enterprises. The announced cost hike for Apps Engine--which some developers complained was a 50 percent increase--immediately started driving enterprise users away, Rodrigues reports.
"Enterprise developer and CIO confidence in using pre-GA cloud services definitely takes a hit with Google's new pricing. Amazon Web Services appears to be the beneficiary," he writes. "For enterprises, the dramatically increased fees and complexity of App Engine's new pricing model will become the cautionary tale to those pushing an enterprise to adopt a cloud offering before the costs and pricing metrics are established."
The other culprits in further shaking confidence in the cloud are VMware and Salesforce.com, Rodrigues writes. The vendors had teamed up about a year ago to allow VMware developers to build and deploy applications for the Force.com cloud platform. But at the VMWorld conference last week, they broke the news that the vendors' strategic alliance is basically over. To replace the VMware functionality in VMforce, Salesforce.com bought Heroku.
Cloud platform providers try to control the whole technology stack, Rodrigues complains, and that leaves CIOs who want platforms based on partnerships and alliance in a precarious place.
"When these partnerships break down, as in the case of VMforce, developer and IT investments in applications that relied on these partnerships will need to be migrated, rewritten, or thrown away, resulting in wasted time, effort, and money. Why start that journey?" he asks.