Now, for the Hard Part of Cloud Computing

The latest version of the Defense Department’s cloud computing strategy, released by Pentagon Chief Information Officer Teresa Takai on Thursday, reinforces plans to consolidate data storage on an enterprise level, with an emphasis on the “cultural change” needed to accomplish this task, i.e. all the children need to play nice with each other.

Data center consolidation and cloud computing, when you get right down to it, are relatively easy to solve hardware and network problems -- they require massive amounts of computing power, storage and redundant network pipes to hook it all together.

Once that happens, the cloud strategy then envisions consolidation of applications and data -- a task that will require an even greater cultural shift than the move to the cloud.

Folks like having a bunch of servers they can touch, but they really love their applications, even if all three military services, for example, may have developed separate applications to manage underwater headsets.