Cloud Computing and the Dearth of Experts

Recent technological changes and developments always lead to a lack of
experts in a particular field. Social Networking and cloud computing
are both facing this “lack of experts” with many people claiming
expertise where very little really exists.

There are excellent experts in both cloud computing and in social
media, but given the lack of available road maps, guides, and case
studies or examples of what has worked and what has not worked leads to
an increase in people who claim one thing but end up not really being
what they say they are. There are two videos circling the internet now
that sum up the issues quite nicely in the lack of experts.

While the videos are meant to be funny, the sad part is that people
get taken in by people claiming expertise, where there isn’t any. If
you are looking at cloud computing, and you want to work with an
expert, let your technical people sit down with the expert before you
hire them and let them hammer out if the expert has the knowledge to at
least integrate systems between the cloud and the internal systems. The
same holds true for social networking, if they are an expert they
should have at least worked with multiple companies and have a lot of
stories about how something has worked in a similar industry.
Continuing to fall for buzz words is generally a bad idea.

The one video on cloud computing is Not Safe for Work (NSFW)
because of the language, but it is pretty dead on when it comes to
people talking about cloud computing with multiple buzz words but not
really understanding what the actual technology is, or what it is
capable of when it comes to saving money or doing work on the internet.

Another one is on social networking, which features the same two folks but centers on Social Networking.

We know that buzz words do not make expertise, and there are plenty
of horror stories that continue on with how people get ripped off by
people they thought were experts. While I love to do things, very few
of them do I consider myself an expert as. There are tons of very good
resources for people to use to find the right people doing the right
thing with all the new technologies coming out. The idea of due
diligence is not new, but something that needs to be done whenever
someone is looking at a new technology or doing something new with
older technology. It is always good to make sure that you really are
getting good advice.