Let´s Walk Out of the Cloud

[Summary form only given]. Cloud computing has draw tremendous attentions from all levels of business and IT industries. Companies like Salesforce and Amazon are on the center of the stage and seem to have demonstrated a successful story on cloud computing. All hardware vendors, including HP and Dell are force to jump on the cloud computing bandwagon as well as enterprise software players, like Microsoft, IBM, Oracle and SAP, are also rush into the seizing battle of this new wave of opportunities. However, is there really an opportunity for new comers, and if so, what is it? Or it is just the same old IT challenges but need to be dealt within a new context by existing vendors? For research community, what are the challenging areas need to be addressed in order to deliver practical values on cloud computing? In this talk, let´s step back from the cloud and review the essential issues when we pursue the cloud computing.