Cloudy in RSA

Well, for those of us who have been in San Francisco and anywhere near the Moscone Center for the past few days, both the weather and the messaging has been decidedly "cloudy". The weather was typical for February.

The amount of messaging tied to "the cloud" was pretty amazing. I have to say that the level of marketing pile-on I saw relative to messaging for the cloud was a little over the top. From panel sessions to banners and billboards, Cloud was pervasive. At one level, it is exciting that so many vendors see the value in delivering messages, and hopefully product, in support of cloud deployments.

However, digging a little deeper, I and others I talked with during the week have real concern that this feels like another High Tech Marketing Frenzy, not dissimilar to "Virtualization", "The Internet" and "Eyeballs" that we've seen over the course of the past 15 years. In each case, the frenzy dramatically outweighed the eventual value to customers, resulting in more than a few missed expectations for vendors, investors and customers buying into the hype. This is reinforced by customers I've talked with recently that say they need help offsetting the hype with their business users, and that the industry is doing them little favors with self-serving hype.

So, let's be careful out there folks. We all know a bandwagon when we see one, but let's not jump so high that we miss the real opportunity to deliver value to customers. Hype doesn't create value!

It was great to see everyone (and I do mean everyone!) this week.

Until aye

Michael