I write this as an old fool who remembers sitting in endless meetings and presentations back when the whole concept of the cloud was starting up. So I can tell you that, right from the beginning, while vendors were pitching the all-encompassing business suite that was going to change your life, there was very little discussion about important ideas such as backup and portability.
The focus was much more on what I call the imaginary cloud. That is, the service that business decision makers dream of: perfectly reliable, utterly global and monolithic, unconstrained by electricity supply or computing power, infinite in storage and free to use. When the boss says “the cloud”, this is likely what they’re picturing. You can see why I call it imaginary.
Nor was there much talk of assets. This is problematic, because assets aren’t just spy-movie slang for deadly assassins – they represent a crossover of two vitally important business concepts; namely economics and intellectual property. And they’re fundamentally important, because cloud computing cannot work without customers transferring assets from inside of their businesses to outside.
“The cloud is a mash-up of different products, with
