Is Cloud Storage Getting Hijacked?

I'm taking a bit of a break from the dedupe discussion to wrap up a fewre-interviews and to time the continuation of the series with aupcoming special feature on deduplication that Network Computing willbe running. In the meantime let's see if we can get this whole cloudstorage thing sorted out. I had a supplier suggest to me the other daythat the term cloud storage is getting hijacked. I disagree.

First, for something to get hijacked there has to be some agreement onwhat the term actually means, and in cloud storage especially therereally is not such agreement and it is my opinion that there should notbe.

While I have had many vendors suggest very clear and concisedefinitions, they all, interestingly enough, fit exactly how their cloudproduct fits into the cloud. I've seen the analyst's attempts atcreating grids and quadrants that pigeonhole the different players inthe market into certain roles. Cloud storage is too big of a concept tofit into a single definition. Just as there are different types ofinternal storage so will there be in the cloud. Your role in cloudstorage is going to set your priorities and make your definition ofcloud storage different than that of your peers.

The only common ground that I can see in the various definitions isthat it is a pay for use model, both up and down. That makes sense.There is also typical focus on scalability as well as ease of use.There is disagreement on what should scale, storage, performance orboth, and how it should scale, loosely coupled clusters or a grid.There does seem to be a high level of commonality in that clusteringaspect. Most of the solutions use a grid or clustered storage model,but as I mentioned, there is disagreement on loosely couple vs. tightlycoupled clusters.

The ease of use component should be thrown out to some extent. Sure itshould be easy to use. All storage should be getting easier to use. Ihave yet to hear a vendor this year bring out a new product with theheadline "This is way harder to use then last years model." Now a fairdebate is, can a cloud storage solution provide a more suitable platformfor easy to manage storage? I'm sure the traditional storage vendorswould beg to differ.In the end cloud storage is what the beholder needs it to be. It likelywill have capabilities like being able to be used or provided on a payper use basis and also have scalability and ease of use functionality,but trying to isolate a single definition is a waste of timefor vendors. Identify how your solution can best solve a problem that aspecific segment of the user community is experiencing and then gettingthat message to them is a better investment of your time.