Fog is just a cloud you can touch.

So instead of “Private Cloud,” wouldn’t “Fog” be a better choice?

You can, interestingly enough, build ITIL-compatible Fogs. The Cloud? Far less likely. As last week’s interview with ITIL guru Rick LiaBraaten revealed, The Cloud is deficient with respect to at least four ITIL core processes: Problem Management, Availability Management, Performance Management, and Change Management. We covered the first three of these last week (“ITIL vs The Cloud: Pick One,KJR, 1/10/2011). To continue:

Recently, scientists at CERN split mercury nuclei for the first time. They expected two zirconium nuclei. What they got was ruthenium and krypton.

For some of us, it’s remarkable enough that they could tell. Knowing enough about fission that this result is surprising is even more remarkable.

For the particle physics community, the gift was the surprise itself. Expected results tell researchers they’re on the right track, but unforeseen results? They can open a whole new field of inquiry. If you’re a scientist, that’s what you hope for.