On the first read-through of this New York Times' article on IBM's plans to entice the enterprise with cloud computing offerings, you might be pardoned for simply assuming that Big Blue has decided to do what so many other businesses have done lately, which is to simply take their latest server or web-based offerings and slap a "Cloud Computing!" sticker on the side for the buzz value. As with most things related to IBM, though, I've come to believe it's more complicated than that.

I think the big clue to the confusion the company exhibits when it comes to cloud computing can be found in this quote from the article:

I.B.M.'s cloud strategy, the company said, is the culmination of 100 prototype projects with companies and government agencies over the last year, and its research partnership with Google.

Yeah... difficult to pull together a coherent strategy out of that many disparate environments. And it shows. Some of the products that IBM will be offering up today fit the general mold of cloud offerings (Business development and test environments, for example) while others are pretty conventional web-based services (virtual desktops) and others yet are internally hosted services for companies who want to get on the cloud bandwagon but don't actually much like the idea of a cloud... and those aren't really cloud-anything coming from IBM, just consulting and hardware sales on enterprise projects, which is hardly a departure for the company.

Om Malik is fond of talking about the "cloud will eventually morph into many clouds, each tailored to specific tasks. " But a "cloud" with a specific task isn't a cloud, it's just another SaaS offering. That's a fine thing in and of itself, but if that's what IBM is choosing to call cloud computing (edit: I understand their preferred term is actually "hybrid" computing... yeah, that doesn't mean anything to me, either) it doesn't instill much faith that they actually understand the concept.

That understanding is neither here nor there for potential customers; you either trust them or you don't, and if you have a specific business need they can solve, it doesn't much matter what they call it. The danger is to the larger marketplace; as the Times, and most other commenters so far have pointed out, IBM is the gateway to legitimacy for concepts seeking to penetrate the enterprise. The PC became legit for business because IBM rolled it out; Linux became an accepted alternative under Big Blue's auspices (at least according to one narrative; other arguments could be made that the utility of these technologies was such that they would eventually have found favor regardless of sponsorship). Cloud computing, with its anemic adoption in the enterprise, then, could become the next beneficiary of IBM's largesse.

But if IBM is simply shopping around some sales, consulting, and SaaS offerings and calling them cloud computing, what does that do for the actual concept? Does it gain legitimacy without any real test or enterprise traction, simply because of the labeling? Or does the basic idea, that of easily purchased, off-premises, generic, repurposable utility computing and storage power never really see the light of day because everyone in the Fortune 100 thinks it's something else suddenly?

I think it's an interesting question, assuming the "IBM as gatekeeper" trope is correct. I'm not so sure that it is; I think the concept of cloud computing is strong enough and useful enough on its own that, whatever label is slapped on it, we'll all end up using it in whole or in part as it matures.