Who would protest the coming of Cloud Computing?  The staff it replaces.  And, many times they are the ones who are involved in evaluating a large move to the cloud.

MSNBC has an article that discusses the privatization of the TSA service to improve customer service vs. Federal TSA staff.

Airports toy with the idea of tossing the TSA

Privatizing security won't affect cost or protocol, but could bolster efficiency, customer relations

Jeff Chiu  /  AP

A security contractor pats down a traveler at San Francisco International Airport last year. Security checks at San Francisco International are conducted by private contractors, not federal TSA agents.

By Harriet BaskasTravel writer

A new year has brought new resolve for airport managers who are fed up with the Transportation Security Agency.

"The TSA has grown too big and we're unhappy with the way it's doing things," said Larry Dale, president of Orlando Sanford International Airport. "My board is sold on the fact that the free enterprise system works well and that we should go with a private company we can hold directly accountable for security and customer satisfaction."

Dale isn't alone. Airports in Los Angeles, the Washington, D.C. metro area, Indianapolis, and Charlotte, N.C., are also considering tossing the TSA.

How many end users feel this way about their IT departments?

'People at the top are idiots'
"The screening partnership program may be a step in the right direction, but ultimately, it doesn’t change the fact that people at the top are idiots. The real problem is that TSA needs to be totally rebuilt," said aviation consultant Michael Boyd, of Colorado-based Boyd Group International.

So, what happens?  Stalling.

Cindi Martin, airport director at Glacier Park International in Montana, said her airport sent an SPP application in October of 2009. They, along with three other Montana airports, are still waiting for action.

The delay is creating a new set of problems. Knowing that a private contractor will eventually take over, "[Transportation Security Officers] are retaliating against authority and the airport management staff," Martin said, "and we’re getting no help from TSA management."

So, even though the Cloud has momentum.  Don’t think there are people out there like the TSA who want the problem cloud to go away.

This will frustrate the end users of IT services even more as others make progress faster.

Think of all those start-ups who own no data center assets and everything has been in the cloud since day 1.  Many times it has been said the greenest action in data centers is keeping from building your next data center.  Many start-ups wouldn’t even consider building a data center.

Can a company who uses the cloud claim they have a green data center?

Could Amazon or some other cloud provider give an environmental impact statement as part of their cloud use?  I think someone in Europe will do this before the US.

Amazon Web Services is a benchmark in cloud computing.  They have added DNS services to improve the performance of AWS clients.

With Route 53, you can create a “hosted zone” to add DNS records for a new domain or transfer DNS records for a domain you currently own. Route 53 is also designed to work well with other AWS offerings, such as AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM). By using AWS IAM with Route 53, you can control who in your organization can make changes to your DNS records. In the future, we plan to add additional integration features such as the ability to automatically tie your Amazon Elastic Load Balancer instances to a DNS name, and the ability to route your customers to the closest EC2 region.

Route 53 is also designed to be fast and simple. It uses a global network of DNS servers to respond to end users with low latency and has an easy-to-use, self-service API. There are no long-term contracts or minimum usage commitments for using Route 53 – you pay $1.00 per month for the hosted zones you manage, $0.50 per million queries for the first billion queries, and $0.25 per million queries above a billion. To learn more about Amazon Route 53 visit the Amazon Route 53 detail page or the Getting Started Guide.

Performance of cloud computing solutions is where the top guys are fighting it out.  Why? The top clients find latency and performance of their services has a direct impact on business and value of their services.

Equinix is one choice to improve the performance of applications.

Applications are not all one and the same. You need to be able to set, measure and achieve individual application performance targets to successfully empower customers and employees. Identifying and prioritizing latency-sensitive applications is key to end-user satisfaction.

You can maximize performance for business-critical and latency-sensitive applications by deploying Application Performance Nodes in Platform Equinix sites, which are strategically placed close to major population centers and key user groups.

Equinix provides the widest metro-level coverage of key business and population centers across North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific—over 6 million square feet and growing.

Another alternative ramping up is from the Telcos.

One report from Ovum discusses the role of Telcos.

Major telcos will be strong force in cloud computing, experts predict

The major global telecommunications companies will become strong players in the cloud computing market as interest from previously cautious end users increases rapidly over the next two to three years, Ovum has predicted.

A new report* by the independent telecoms analyst states that AT&T, BT, Orange Business Services and Verizon Business have made considerable progress in the arena in just over a year, and in terms of services, can now compete with established players from the IT industry.

According to the report, these companies have led a ‘competitive march’ from telecoms into cloud computing, and now have widely acknowledged credibility in the field.

As companies like HP, Cisco, IBM, and Dell build solution stacks that go across their products.  Another integration paradigm is to integrate the network operator with the cloud operator.

Peter Hall, report author and Ovum principal analyst, said: “The major telcos have a long heritage in providing managed data center services and hosting and have combined this with their networking and security expertise to meet the needs of customers for cloud computing services.

The Telcos are ramping up to be cloud computing players.