Marketing Cloud Computing to Carnivores

It was inevitable that someone with their head in the clouds would respond to our initial article “Want Some Fake Fries With That Vapor Shake.” To our liking, the folks at ‘Secure Cloud Review’ [1] have done so. While it wouldn’t be in anyone’s best interest to play the blame-game, as a colleague of mine asked, I too shall ask: Exactly what point is their article trying to make?

We reiterate what we’ve stated in the past: “…those with much to gain will be marketing the cloud as the next best thing.” And we stick to our guns! And so we begin – again – the author in the cited ‘Secure Cloud Review’ article states: “We are only in the nascent stages of a long-term secular trend toward cloud computing.” This mirrors infamous comments made by Richard Stallman, who said: (1) “It’s stupidity. It’s worse than stupidity: it’s a marketing hype campaign;” and (2) “Somebody is saying this is inevitable–and whenever you hear somebody saying that, it’s very likely to be a set of businesses campaigning to make it true.” [2]

Or how about Larry Ellis, CEO of Oracle, who has said about cloud computing: “The interesting thing about cloud computing is that we’ve redefined cloud computing to include everything that we already do. I can’t think of anything that isn’t cloud computing with all of these announcements. The computer industry is the only industry that is more fashion-driven than women’s fashion. Maybe I’m an idiot, but I have no idea what anyone is talking about. What is it? It’s complete gibberish. It’s insane. When is this idiocy going to stop?” [3]

A few comments about the author Gray Hall: He is the President & CEO of Alert Logic, Inc., the leading provider of cloud-powered security and compliance solutions. Mr. Gray joined Alert Logic in 2009 and is a 20 year veteran of the IT industry. [4] We now know what Stallman meant.

I get it now Mr. Hall, I really do! My CTO explained to me this way: One old insurance sales tactic is called a coffin sale, and it goes something like this: An insurance salesperson walks into a home and shows the husband a coffin, asking him “What is your family going to do when you’re in there?” A sure bet is that someone is getting the be-jesus scared out of him in order to close a sale. Accidentally, my CTO fudged on the story when he asked my colleague: “If a salesman comes to you and hands you a mini-coffin and asks you ‘what are you going to do when you’re in there?’, what will you say?” My colleague responded: “There’s nothing to say. Absolutely nothing.” And then we burst out laughing. Okay, enough of this humor, because both the cloud and a coffin represent deathly serious business.

The ‘Secure Cloud Review’ article (hereinafter referred to as SCR) further states: “IT infrastructure is inherently unstable, IT use cases are inherently insecure, and the cost of achieving the degree of security required to make us all comfortable is prohibitively high – both in terms of the on-premise systems and integration costs, as well as the soft costs associated with changing business practices and removing various liberties in IT use cases.”

Huh? Many enterprise architects at many companies have achieved maximum stability for years while providing greatly strengthened infrastructures without the use of anything in the cloud. For this statement to be true would mean to infer that in the past (prior to the cloud) systems were always crashing and security was so lax that people were afraid to do business online. Amazon, Ebay, countless banks and financial industries have performed just fine without the cloud. So, the point made by SCR seems rather moot.

SCR further states: “Cloud computing changes all this.” Really? I still can’t help but think of the comments of both Stallman and Larry Ellis (cited above), plus the following comments of John Chambers: “But on Wednesday Cisco Systems’ Chairman and CEO conceded that the computing industry’s move to sell pay-as-you-go computing cycles available as a service on the Internet was also ‘a security nightmare‘.” [5]

SCR claims that “…this in turn creates a more economical way to approach the elusive goal of stability in IT infrastructure environments.” Yet I can’t help but continue to point out recent outages that occurred at Google, Salesforce, Rackspace, Twitter, Amazon, and the list goes on and on. So let me get this straight: As an enterprise architect in a Fortune 100 company who has worked for years at creating a robust and stable environment, while keeping things secure, if I would only place my trust in the clouds, I would be worry free? It seems to me that SCR is alluding to this with their comment about the ‘elusive’ stability in IT infrastructure environments.

SCR’s article was meant, in my opinion, for those either not concerned with security or for those who really don’t understand risk. SCR did, however, make a point for us when the author of the article states: “The fact that today’s public cloud services are no more secure than most IT environments – and much less secure than many corporate IT environments – is not an indictment of the entire cloud computing business model.” Isn’t that amusing? “Look, the cloud is no more secure than anything else, in fact it’s even LESS secure than your office, but don’t hold that against us!”

An interesting choice of words; however, I don’t know how SCR intends to woo the masses with that statement. What would you say if we take SCR’s argument and apply it to a different application? In this case, we’re telling you: “move into our community, because quite frankly, not only is your community unstable, we can offer you better ROI on security and infrastructure investments while not offering you more security than you already have. In fact, we’re lowering the security bar!” Hey, I’m sold; in fact, I’m preparing to dump my client data right into the public eye. It should make little difference that I have already invested money into providing some form of security and I’ve done a good job at it. Truth be told, I really need to be in the cloud!

I scratched my head when SCR stated: “Let’s focus on the meat.” as I can’t help but think outside the box and wonder about the vegans. The ‘where’s the beef?’ took us by surprise being mentioned in the title and deserves its due credit as one of the most successful marketing efforts ever in the United States. It didn’t take us by surprise though that someone else would again try to market away security and risk into the cloud. Well since those pushing for the cloud love marketing so much, here is a bit of marketing that didn’t go so well…

• Coors put its slogan, “Turn It Loose,” into Spanish, where it was read as “Suffer From Diarrhea.” [6]
• Japan’s second-largest tourist agency was mystified when it expanded to English-speaking countries and began receiving requests for unusual sex tours. Upon finding out why, the owners of the Kinki Nippon Tourist Company changed its name. However, the company didn’t manage to change the name of all its divisions, so visitors to Japan still have the opportunity to take a ride on the Kinki Nippon Railway. [6]
• When Parker Pen marketed a ballpoint pen in Mexico, its ads were supposed to say: “It won’t leak in your pocket and embarrass you.” However, the company mistakenly thought the Spanish word “embarazar” meant ‘to embarrass’. Lo and behold, the ads instead said: “It won’t leak in your pocket and make you pregnant.”
• When Pepsi entered the Chinese market a few years ago, the translation of their slogan “Pepsi Brings you Back to Life” was a little more literal than they intended. In Chinese, the slogan meant: “Pepsi Brings Your Ancestors Back from the Grave.” [6]

I guess I should add my own marketing gaffe here: “Come to the cloud; just as clouds disappear, so will your security!” (I really meant to say that risk will disappear. NOT.) In ending, I guess that the definition of a cloud sums it all up all by itself:

What are clouds made of? A cloud is just water in gaseous state, it is just vapor. [7]

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JO
blog [at] theaeonsolution dot com

[1] http://securecloudreview.com/2010/01/fake-fries-and-vapor-shakes-wheres-the-beef.html
[2] http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-10054253-92.html
[3] http://news.cnet.com/8301-13953_3-10052188-80.html
[4] http://securecloudreview.com/2009/12/secure-cloud-review-about-us—gray-hall-and-misha-govshteyn.html
[5] http://www.circleid.com/posts/john_chambers_cloud_computing_security_nightmare/
[6] http://www.takingontobacco.org/intro/funny.html
[7] http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_are_clouds_made_of