Network Computing is part of the Informa Tech Division of Informa PLC

This site is operated by a business or businesses owned by Informa PLC and all copyright resides with them. Informa PLC's registered office is 5 Howick Place, London SW1P 1WG. Registered in England and Wales. Number 8860726.

Don't Rush To Cloud Computing: Page 3 of 3

As useful and important as virtualization is, most IT shops are still in the process of embracing it. Disaster recovery is one of the more obvious places to use virtualization, and yet in a recent InformationWeek Analytics survey, 34 percent said they wouldn't use virtualization at all, and an additional 21% said they'd use it on no more than 20 percent of their systems. The No. 1 reason for not using virtualization for DR was that software vendors wouldn't support it. While I don't recommend rolling over for software vendors' outmoded requirements, the stat does show that, yes, evolution in IT takes time.

There will be no "year of cloud computing," not this or any other year. More likely, there will be a decade or so of hashing out what works and what doesn't. Few IT professionals cling to the status quo; those with that personality are usually more comfortable in other jobs. But it doesn't take too many years in the IT trenches to realize that innovation for innovation's sake won't win you many friends. Advising steady evolution of systems and processes done in close conjunction with your business partners will never light up the blogosphere the way a clarion call to the next cool thing will, but that doesn't mean it isn't good advice.