Hidden Costs Off-the-Cloud: iTKO ChalkTalk

OK, here's the last of our little whiteboard series on Development and Test Clouds. What are some of the hidden costs that are not improved by the use of elastic Cloud Computing based images for dev and test environments? iTKO founder John Michelsen discusses how these off-cloud fees and constraints can hinder the value of Cloud application development.

Cloud applications -- at least most of the ones that would support any complex enterprise goal -- do not mean simply sticking a VM on EC2, or "doing your SOA" in a Private/Public Cloud. Before you deploy successfully in the cloud, you have to develop successfully in the cloud. Taken together, you can see how the challenges of:

1. constrained or unavailable services and images, or "wires hanging out" of the cloud;
2. volatility of demand from development teams, and constrained capacity of cloud-based application resources; and
3. hidden costs that are unacceptable for dev & test organizations

can really hinder the incredible gains in flexibility and cost savings we expected from moving our application development and testing lifecycles to the Cloud. We hope you enjoy these occasional video series, and welcome your comments or recommendations for future topics you'd like to see us cover.