He's looked at clouds from both sides now

A colleague recently sent around this quote from a university CTO he interviewed for an upcoming article: "We're not building some generic Joni Mitchell cloud. The thing we're trying to do is build a cloud that is really infrastructure and services, not some vanilla, virtualized blah, blah, blah."

No generic Joni Mitchell cloud for these guys; no sir, no way. And there's no need to explain the Mitchell reference, either, at least not if you're of a certain age and/or taste in music. (Others can Google "Joni Mitchell cloud song")

After chuckling at the quote, my first thought was to write a parody of cloud computing based on the lyrics from Mitchell's 1969 folk hit, which is really called "Both Sides Now." My second thought was that someone most likely had already done so. And, sure enough, someone has, that someone being Bruce Kerr, a.k.a. "Loose Bruce Kerr" - "as featured on the Dr. Demento & Jim Bohannon Shows" - who when not performing parodies is, oddly enough, an in-house attorney at Oracle.

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A colleague recently sent around this quote from a university CTO he interviewed for an upcoming article: "We're not building some generic Joni Mitchell cloud. The thing we're trying to do is build a cloud that is really infrastructure and services, not some vanilla, virtualized blah, blah, blah."

No generic Joni Mitchell cloud for these guys; no sir, no way. And there's no need to explain the Mitchell reference, either, at least not if you're of a certain age and/or taste in music. (Others can Google "Joni Mitchell cloud song")

After chuckling at the quote, my first thought was to write a parody of cloud computing based on the lyrics from Mitchell's 1969 folk hit, which is really called "Both Sides Now." My second thought was that someone most likely had already done so. And, sure enough, someone has, that someone being Bruce Kerr, a.k.a. "Loose Bruce Kerr" - "as featured on the Dr. Demento & Jim Bohannon Shows" - who when not performing parodies is, oddly enough, an in-house attorney at Oracle.

Some of you have seen it already, but for everyone else you can catch Kerr's April, 2009 rendition of "It's Cloud Computing" on my blog. To give you a taste, here's the first chorus:

I.T. is in the blue sky now

My local storage won't allow

IT'S CLOUD COMPUTING I want now

Who needs a server farm anyhow?

I swapped some e-mail with Kerr and here's an edited version of that exchange:

What was the inspiration/back story for "It's Cloud Computing"?

At the time I was assistant general counsel at Sun Microsystems, sometimes supporting the "Sun Grid" team. The Joni Mitchell song was crying out to be parodied on this subject.

How was your song received at the time of its release?

Lots of hits on YouTube, lots of comments from IT folks; they seemed to like it, particularly the "Let me never spend another night ... with Rajeesh on the phone" line. Don't get me wrong, while frustrated in the past with such long support calls to India (I'm on an iMac now and those days are gone, I'm happy to say), I deal with a lot of outsourced teams in India with my job here at Oracle now, and we all are on very friendly and supportive terms.

Have you gotten much reaction to it over the subsequent two years? Any stories to tell?

Some IT folks have used the video on a big screen at conferences, that sort of thing. I think a company in Germany is using it for their "hold music" for conference calls; I remember giving permission on that.

Cloud computing has really exploded over the past two years; how do you think your song holds up?

I hope it's more relevant today than earlier, as the whole area is expanding, but we'll see. Parodies can often get dated pretty quickly.

Here is Kerr's second chorus:

I've lived with I.T. up and down

My cards and tape drives abound

IT'S CLOUD COMPUTING I choose now

Just plug me in, all on, oh wow

The words alone don't do it justice; go check out the video. Fair warning, though: You may not be able to get the tune of your head afterward.

Earworm remedies and comments should be directed to buzz@nww.com.

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