In search of a cloud computing metaphor? Think Harrods, with some twists

The metaphors used to describe any tech­nol­ogy strongly shape its future, through their influ­ence on exec­u­tives. As Andrew McAfee (now at the MIT after Har­vard) notes about Cloud Com­put­ing, dif­fer­ent imageries are cur­rently com­pet­ing. As Andrew points out, the elec­tric grid metaphor can influ­ence busi­ness exec­u­tives to view Cloud Com­put­ing as a com­mod­i­fi­ca­tion of a class of IT ser­vices. Treat­ing them as a com­mod­ity is of course a recipe for dis­as­ter. To counter this, Andrew evolves the metaphor into an “IT-as-change imagery”:

Cloud com­put­ing is mov­ing us toward a world in which some kinds of busi­ness change come out of the wall. Not all types of busi­ness change will come out of this wall, but some will. A few of these will be easy, most will be at least some­what dif­fi­cult. Some will be pro­found, some triv­ial. The dif­fer­ent types of cloud-enabled change will affect var­i­ous con­stituen­cies, both inter­nal and external.

Both metaphors are too abstract though, in my expe­ri­ence, to com­mu­ni­cate non-IT exec­u­tives the true and pre­cise impact of cloud com­put­ing. Here’s how I would explain it out­side of IT circles:

In the world you oper­ate today, imag­ine that lit­er­ally all busi­ness man­agers, from CEOs of pub­lic com­pa­nies to sole busi­ness own­ers, includ­ing would-be busi­ness cre­ators, have a huge super­mar­ket just round their cor­ner. A spe­cial super­mar­ket in fact. It sells a tremen­dous array of prod­ucts and ser­vices, for every indus­try, need, or activ­ity. It is also ever expand­ing: if you make two trips at just 1 hour inter­val, new prod­ucts will have already been stocked and avail­able for sale, in addi­tion to the old ones and on new shelves con­stantly being added. On top of that, the price of each prod­uct is incred­i­bly cheap: new cars for exam­ple, are sell­ing for 1/1000 of their nor­mal price, or even cheaper.

The last char­ac­ter­is­tic of this store: you don’t own what you buy, you just lease it. It can be a one-time fee, reg­u­lar pay­ments, or any other scheme, you lease it. What’s more, if for any rea­son the provider of your prod­uct dis­ap­pears, then your prod­uct dis­ap­pears as well. Let’s illus­trate this with the car exam­ple: you can lease a car for, say $30 a month, and use it as you own it. You would then leave your “stuff” inside the car: some books, some papers, per­haps a watch, etc. If the pro­ducer or your car dis­ap­pears, your car van­ishes as well, with your stuff inside.

The trade-off begins to appear: $30 a month for a car is a really good price, but you are at risk of this dis­ap­pear­ance. You can mit­i­gate it how­ever: choose a well-known and estab­lished ven­dor, or just leave only non valu­able “stuff” inside. Many par­al­lels can be made with this metaphor.It is for exam­ple really dif­fi­cult to find your way in an ever-expanding, huge store, and find the exact prod­uct that would fit your needs. Then, how do you know if its pro­ducer is not on the verge of dis­ap­pear­ing? You can stick to the big names only, but what this prod­uct taht would really fit your needs, would you try it?

You can also see why small and large com­pa­nies would react dif­fer­ently, with dif­fer­ent risk aver­sion. Large com­pa­nies would pre­fer to buy their cars, for exam­ple, and ben­e­fit from the cer­tainty. Small busi­nesses would buy the $30 a month car, and if it dis­ap­pears, just buy another with a lit­tle it of trou­ble. You can already see how com­pet­i­tive dynam­ics would evolve, with small early-adopters buy­ing every­thing at these stores and com­pet­ing on equal stand­ing with large com­pa­nies, while hav­ing a risk pro­file much higher as well.

In the IT area, Cloud Com­put­ing rep­re­sent such a shift: each busi­ness, no mat­ter how small or remote, now has access to such a super­mar­ket instantly. Now, think about your busi­ness, and exam­ine how your com­pet­i­tive advantage(s) would be sus­tain­able in this sce­nario. Some won’t resist.

At its core, Cloud Com­put­ing is noth­ing more than an irre­sistible way of enabling dis­trib­uted eco­nom­ics of scale, that ben­e­fit orga­ni­za­tions of all size. A sec­ond order con­se­quence is a spur in inno­v­a­tive prod­ucts and ser­vices that exec­u­tives can take advan­tage of. Con­ceiv­ing it as a huge, ever-expanding super­mar­ket across all areas can help frame this new context.

Photo credit: Manel