Is it possible that the normally thrusting cloud computing industry has been so quiet about the recent Amazon outage and Sony data breaches because it is drawing a discreet cone of silence over the affairs so as not to arouse further public mistrust of the cloud model?
It's a minor conspiracy theory, but one that has excited some debate at the first day of the Data Centres Europe 2011 conference, both in the open plenary debates and among the networking break coffee congregations.
More pessimistic opiners have gone so far as to suggest that any further such mishaps involving 'cloud' will cause the technology to have to change its name in an effort distance itself from lasting negative associations, and then pursue a 'new life' under a different market identity. Others are not so sure that the 'cloud computing' term was ever properly suitable as a generic label.
"Cloud computing used to be called 'utility computing'," says Gregor Petri, who enjoys the job title of 'Advisor, Lean IT & Cloud Computing' at CA Technologies, speaking at a midday panel debate billed as 'Which cloud to follow?'.
Making utility computing sexier and more mass-market-friendly, by renaming it 'cloud', was an agreeable side effect of the reinvention, to be sure; but if the moniker becomes synonymous with risk, then the industry would have to consider another name change. "That's why they [the IT sector at large] is not talking about it [the Sony breach]," he suggests; besides which the IT industry has never been entirely comfortable with 'cloud computing' as a generic technology descriptor, adds Petri: "Cloud is not an acronym - and the IT industry lives by acronyms".
So what should cloud computing be rechristened as? Your suggestions invited below, please...

Edited: 28 June 2012 at 04:42 PM by Buzzsore Moderator