Analyst Charles King, Pund-IT, calls this an "anticipatory initiative" in that it assumes that as Internet usage continues to evolve, consumers and businesses will use the Web to access, consume and store increasingly complex "rich" data objects and resources including photos, videos, health records and financial records. "Creating the sophisticated data storage architectures and infrastructure capable of supporting rich data is the aim of the Vision Cloud initiative, and IBM and its partners should be applauded for the scope of this effort. But while its aims are laudable, achieving the Vision Cloud will depend both on the collaborative innovation IBM and its partners can bring to the effort in the short term, and how successful they are at bringing in additional partners, service providers and enterprise customers over time."
The issue of the data explosion in the cloud is a very serious problem as more companies expand their use of cloud computing, notes analyst Judith Hurwitz, Hurwitz & Associates. "Companies are looking to integrate data across public and private cloud (such as SaaS applications such as Salesforce.com etc. and various other packaged SaaS offering in finance, HR, etc.) with the data that they are managing in their private clouds and within the data centers." In terms of storage, it is a critical issue, she says, with storage expanding at an even greater pace in the cloud than in an on-premises implementation.
Over the next 6-12 months, IBM will work on the architecture, and work with the stakeholders to ensure they have a concise, coherent architecture that meets their needs. Once that's finalized, Wolfsthal says they will incrementally roll out the various technologies that will lead to full-blown implementation. During the last 18 months the group will start with use-case demonstrations, working with the various partners to test the architecture against their workloads.
