A couple months ago I was in a meeting where an interesting question was asked: "Are you using Amazon Web Services?". The answer was an eye opener, as it sounded like: "Well, we looked at the employee expense system and found a number of credit card entries with AWS as customer name, so the answer was yes." This basically means that nobody knows what is being done on AWS, what data is being transferred, how critical this is for the company etc.

Cloud computing was initiated in the consumer/SMB space, where reading and agreeing on terms and conditions over the web, paying by credit card, accepting standard operating conditions and procedures, are common practices. Unfortunately, the same rules do not apply in the corporate world.

Indeed, Sarbanes-Oxley, Basel 2 and other regulations force companies to implement auditing processes and governance rules that consumers and SMB's do not have. Large enterprises are often very sensitive to risks related to information leakage, intellectual property theft and a number of other similar incidents. Not speaking about the fact such cloud computing activity happens outside the control/oversight of the CIO and the IT department. This is actually "shadow IT" at its best.

This made me think. Isn't there a need for another type of cloud computing, one that combines the benefits of being able to ramp up and down resources very quickly, not having to care about the day to day management of the environment, with the needs of businesses? These needs include clearly defined rules of engagement, service levels agreements, specific and well documented security measures, back-up/restore capabilities, monthly bills, usage reports etc. And obviously, all of that should be delivered at the same low price. Well, that's what I call the Business Cloud.

People will argue that both Google and Microsoft offer cloud e-mail with monthly or yearly fees. That's actually what gets closest to the concept of a business cloud. However, as companies understand the paradigm of cloud better, they will want to use the environment for a number of other things, including high performance computing, cross-enterprise collaboration and many other applications running irregularly.

I could imagine a company delivering a business cloud to have a small sales force to sell the services to large customers. The team would present the service to a customer and agree on a contract. Ideally, there would be a number of standard clauses, including security, availability, backup/restore, management (application, as infrastructure come standard) etc. The customer would choose from the menu what would suit him best. Standard pricing would be available, either per consumption unit (hour of equivalent CPU time used, GB of data stored etc.) or per month. Licensing terms would be adapted to the chosen option. As in many situations, integration with the existing client environment would be required, integration tools would be made available as well as the management of the integration. Also, as large data quantities may have to be used, physical transfer of data (using disks), would be an option, recognizing they somehow defeat the concept of cloud all together.

Manufacturing companies would greatly benefit of such a service, as it would allow them to perform digital product testing, visualization, and many other high performance computing tasks. They would also be able to link with suppliers and customers alike to perform collaborative tasks. This would provide a great environment for streamlining the supply chain and reduce cost/inventory along the way.

Do you believe there is an opportunity here?