The current levels of hype around cloud computing are only matched by the levels of fear and confusion around the topic.

Lets start with some traditional definitions of fear:

• “An emotion experienced in anticipation of some specific pain or danger be uneasy or apprehensive about”
• “To be afraid or feel anxious or apprehensive about a possible or probable situation or event”
• “To be uneasy or apprehensive of the unknown”

All these definitions feel appropriate with respect to cloud computing, especially for corporations and organizations that have lived with undertones of “No one ever got fired for buying (insert supersized vendor here).” That is to say, “make safe choices on totally known, slow-moving entities and keep all your processing in a box under your desk where you can pat it regularly and the hum of the fans bring you comfort.”These sorts of undertones are one of the main roadblocks to innovation. What is innovation? Well let’s keep it simple, innovation is “doing more for less,” and these days everyone — especially at the CxO level — wants to be doing more for less.

Cloud-based technologies and methodologies can indeed deliver more for less if used appropriately for the respective organization. Now here is the rub: Organizations don’t know how to map their needs to the unknown and hence are afraid of taking the plunge.

In these circumstances organizations need to expend massive amounts of effort trying to investigate and study the myriad vendors in the cloud.

There is an easier way in that there are organizations out there that are vendor-agnostic, have done the investigations, have all the experience in the various industry sectors, have the capability to map the options and opportunities to the particular organization and, finally, can orchestrate and manage the use of the cloud technologies.

One set of fears circulate around people perceiving the loss of control over their pet boxes and systems, e.g. “I know it’s secure when its near me.” Partnering with an organization that can provide transparency into the cloud and security controls and audits will alleviate these fears.

As a simple example, the owner should be able to see where their data is being kept, who accessed it and actually have service levels associated with their provisioned resources.

Now we come to the fear of the hype: “Is cloud computing just another dot-com boom waiting to go bust?” There are 2 definites that people should take comfort in around this fear

1. Even if the term “cloud” goes away, the technology it drove into the marketplace will remain;
2. If you partner with a major systems integrator, one that can broker and orchestrate many cloud suppliers and at the same time supply you services built by them, you will end up with a high level of immunity to “things that go bump in the night.”

The final fear I’d like to touch on is the need for an organization to embrace a high level of standardization. Standardizing and controlling software sprawl is hard work, but would you rather be afraid of a little hard work or end up in a situation where the person that developed that mainframe application 40 years ago has passed away?

Do you need to standardize? Not if you don’t want to, but if you want to amplify “more for less” you should consider it. Again, pick a partner that can help you get there and keep you there.

In the cloud no one can hear you scream? It depends on whom you partner with and whom you trust.

Jim Naumovski is Director of CSC Cloud Computing Services for Asia and the Pacific, and Director GOS Enterprise & Systems Architecture, Design & Build for Asia.