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I find myself using metaphors nearly every day. I wonder if this is because the things I focus on are actually complex, or that they are not all that complex, it just seems that way. Many blogger, Journalists and Marketeers are trying to help people to really understand what is hype and what is real, regarding Cloud. Personally, I have spent a lot of time on Twitter lately, mostly research, but I ‘Tweet’ as well - participation is required. A quick aside - TweetDeck is a great tool, allows filtering etc.,… Honestly, I can understand how people could get frustrated with Twitter, if such a tool did not exist.

Some slight drama around the house this week, nothing like family drama to help put things in perspective. One moderate snowboarding accident, and my 14yo has a broken Radius, and he is not happy about it (not because Snowboarding is done for the season, rather due to Soccer season now a few weeks delayed). He will recover, bone heal.

Spending a lot of quiet time at home. I needed a little distraction from worrying about my son.  The experience did - of course - suggest yet another metaphor for Cloud computing. The accident occured at Stowe mountain resort in northern Vermont. The ski patrol did a marginal job ( he boarded the rest of the way down the mountain and they did not do a though diagnostic).  They presented a few options for treatment, a local family clinic, a local hosptial and the Level 1 trauma center in Burlington (FAHC - who did a stellar job).

The first choice was the local one, seemed to make the most sense - but a 3 hour wait changed my mind. We decided on FAHC. It turned out to be a good choice, as the break needed to be reduced (re-set, I will spare details), which is complex, and requires expertise.

How is this is this a metaphor for Cloud computing or SaaS? The family practice, while necessary and local, and probably able to handle many situations, was not prepared for the ’spike in demand’ (apparently many kids had issues on Friday due to very hard snow). The clinic was overwhelmed. Even if they had been able to do the initial diagnoses, they did not have the expertise house to complete the treatment. This points out two very important characteristics of larger, centralized services:

• Spikes in demand can be handled as a matter of course
• The model allows for expertise to be centrally managed (not for everything of course)

My experience leaves out all the scenarios which would have played to the strength of the local practice, of which there are many. But it is another way to think of Cloud and Utility computing. There are certain areas which it makes a lot of sense to centralize and pool resources to gain a higher value.