Two Corners of the Cloud Cube

One interesting effect that can be observed at present is the polarisation occurring in the two extreme corners of the JF cloud cube.

In the Blue Corner characterised by the elements; Internal, Proprietary, and Perimeterised are the Infrastructure teams of many organisations who are saying
"We can do Cloud! look a Virtual server called into being in less than 5 minutes....
clever us... you don't need the outside Cloud anymore stick with us!"
(Oh and by the way the outside cloud is a scary place if you stay inside our silo you can "feel" more secure!)
These are often called Private Clouds, the US Govt G-Cloud is a prime example, watch out for the emergence of the term E-Clouds, meaning Enterprise Clouds.

In the Green Corner characterised by the elements; External, Open (Though there are still substantial remnants of Proprietary) and Deperimeterised are the advocates of Consumerisation who are saying
"The Cloud is out there!, lets use it!
Why call into being a server when you can have a service?
Imagine how easy it will be to collaborate with the outside world!"

Why does this polarisation have such a critical impact on the collaboration opportunities offered by the Cloud.
The answer is simple if too many organisations are suckered into the Blue Corner then the powerfull collaboration opportunities of the Green Corner will be killed off.
There will be less reason for External Cloud based Identity Provider Services to be launched. All the enabling services will only be viable if the larger enterprises make the move to the deperimeterised parts of the cloud. It is clearly in the interest of the current providers to keep the Cloud Private.

The unfortunate result of the growing number of Private Clouds will be that the evolutionary leap will not occur the "mud skip will crawl back into the slime and continue to rely on its gills for oxygen".
We will all need to stick in our own little corporate ponds and the progress towards freeing Information and extending human capability will be stymied once again.

Happily the power of Consumerisation will likely provide a force for change, the Customers of these silo based organisations, have a voice and they are starting to learn how to use it.