So it seems my previous blog where I employed a Mandelbrot quotation
about clouds in the context of the OTEX-ESIC acquisition, may have been taken
the wrong way. Let me put that to rest
before more of you get your knickers all in a bunch.
I used Mandelbrot’s quote because it stemmed from his
lifelong research as a mathematician and as an “IBMer” who is known as the “father of fractal geometry”. His perspectives of “clouds” are a parallel thought
of sorts: As you get closer, there are more complexities.
Today’s cloud computing environments certainly have more complexities
as you get a closer look.
Besides, all I was implying was that OpenText now has a
cloud that is much bigger with the acquisition of EasyLink. Bigger yes, and in
fact more complex as you look closer – just like Mandelbrot’s fractals. The analogy stands up against just about any “cloud”
technology we talk about, obviously. On
a PowerPoint diagram, the “cloud” is usually depicted as a well, fuzzy cloud and
it represents just about everything and anything that’s supposed to represent
the internet, extranet, intranet, and so on. It reveals an element that is nebulous,
yet contained; “fuzzy” yet real. “Pay no
attention to that cloud behind the curtain” the Wizard of Oz might proclaim
- we’re supposed to take it at face value.
At least that’s how it was in earlier days where we were to
just go along and assume someone knows what that fuzzy little cloud on the diagram
meant. In those days (which are still
going on today mind you), clouds meant somewhere outside your environment and
the goal was to traverse the cloud to get your data to the other side.
Today, it’s different. With IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, combined with anything
“virtual”, we use “cloud” as a moniker to encompass all the vast components used
to shape them up into a viable product or service. And, to finally come to my point; we need to
see what’s inside that fuzzy diagram now and guess what - there are more and more
complexities of technology inside – hard at work. Something akin to Mandelbrot’s “irregularities”
of clouds. Check out Wiki’s site about
Cloud Computing - the diagram shows the
inner-complexities of the cloud.
