John Cowan

So 6fusion officially passes the Gartner smell test. Woop-dee-doo! Can a service provider actually use what we cooked up? The Gartner criteria can’t tell you.

What is going to matter most in the coming years is the next set of five criteria, which will measure the Cloud service provider’s actual relevance (now there’s a term right out of the .bomb era, eh?) to a service organization (outsourced or internal, it doesn’t matter). Here are the next five criteria you need to think about in for Gartner’s smell test to really help you tell the difference between the piles you are sniffing, especially if you are thinking about using cloud services to offer solutions to real business customers:

Business Value: The service can clearly demonstrate business value to the customer. Two examples of business value are proven and documented (maybe even guaranteed) TCO improvement (or operational efficiency gains), and an SLA with teeth (real financial risk for the service provider if they blow it). A real cloud service must do more than pay these subjects casual lip service.

Data Residency Control & Interoperability: The service provider is able to allow the customer to choose where data resides in the cloud (physically). Compliance is not something that can be ignored just because Gmail is cool. That may fly during the honeymoon period, but business customers care where their data (such as email or CRM) is sitting and who can potentially get their hands on it (just ask Liquid Motors what they think). In addition, the service provider must support a minimum standard for interoperability. If a customer builds a workload on your cloud today, they should be able to move to some other cloud tomorrow. Proprietary lock in is so 1999. Examples of supported interoperability include standards like Open Virtualization Format (OVF).

Any App Architecture: The service provider must be able to address non-web services applications. Contrary to the folks with SaaS on the brain these days, the vast majority of businesses in fact do *not* run web services applications. In order for a cloud service provider to prove relevance they must be able to enable or assist with the transition from the old paradigm to the new without first selling the customer a shiny new forklift.

Business Process Integration: The services provided cannot be an island. This is not called island computing. This is called cloud computing. Therefore, cloud services must be able to integrate with existing customer business process (particularly the automated ones) practices. A good indication as to the level of sophistication your cloud service provider maintains is the number of use cases. Does their cloud service interweave with your DR plan and your production collaboration suite? Or are they a one-trick pony?

Cost Profiling: The service provider must allow the customer to profile their applications before moving to the cloud service in order to gauge performance, and most importantly, the cost. Metered use is great. But if a customer can’t translate that into what they will really pay for services, it is not enough. Simplicity is the hallmark of cost profiling and automation is a cornerstone.

Knowing what cloud computing should smell so that when it comes along you can recognize it is obviously important to mainstream adoption of cloud computing. But this alone isn’t enough of a guide as you find your way through the dark. Being able to independently judge a service offering for relevance to your most prized possession (your customers) will prove to be a much more poignant test.