Live from VMworld 2009: VMware on Cloud Computing | virtualization.info is a good article talking about the vaporware that VMWare calls Cloud Computing.

I’m still not certain that cloud computing is real, jsut as I’m not really certain that J2EE portals and SOA are real. To me they are both buzzwords pushing concepts that are neither new nor truly earth-shattering. We’ve had both for a long time, we just didn’t package them the same way as before. In reality, I think they both suffer from some foundational issues that will stop them from being the end all and be all that they claim to be.

h2. Cloud Computing

Do we really want all our applications in the cloud? I know I don’t. I’m as connected as the next guy and work on the internet *a lot*. I use Google Apps, blogs, and on-line notes. Unfortunately, there are a lot times that I cannot get onto the net. Then, all those on-line resources are gone. Until internet access is ubiquitous and on-line SaaS vendors are held to rigorous SLAs with teeth for missing numbers, their availability simply isn’t good enough. Web-based apps? I’ve never seen one as easy to use and as quick to respond as a locally installed app. Why? The network of course. It doesn’t matter how much bandwidth you have, unless you can remove the latency, web apps will always feel sluggish. Sure I can write the app in client-side Java and simply use the browser as the platform, but that still has limitations.

Don’t get me wrong, I think that this can help a lot of people do a lot of things. I just reject the notion that this is a game changer.