Is Cloud Computing just a fad?

Last week I attended an IBM SOA event in Northern Virginia. While there, I was discussiing the merits of cloud computing with some interested attendees. Their key question was if cloud computing was just a fad or did it represent a disruptive change in the marketplace.

I personally believe that cloud computing is real and that this new view on infrastructure really is disruptive. To me, hardware (server and storage) virtualization technology, the virtualization of applications through SOA and the virtualization of data connectivity through ad hoc networking, makes cloud computing technology more than just a fad. While this concept isn't new, technology to implement the concept is. Besides, would IBM invest so much into such an initiative without doing some due diligence of its own?

Last year, IBM demonstrated Blue Cloud in Shanghai which was the result of an initiative from IBM’s Almaden Research Center architecture. Blue Cloud was built on Xen and PowerVM virtualized Linux and a Hadoop parallel workload scheduling. Blue Cloud was also used to adopt service oriented architecture, Web 2.0 applications and other new technology breakthroughs.

Last year in his blog, Larry Dignan, the Editor in Chief of ZDNet and Editorial Director of TechRepublic said that the big takeaway then was " The cloud is going corporate. And this enterprise relationship will be built on trust."

I trust that IBM continues to do its due diligence, and this is definitely not a fad.