The desire by application groups and business units to grasp the benefits of cloud computing is palpable; one example surfaced this week, when the U.S. Federal government announced that, starting in 2012, federal agencies are being told to "whenever a secure, reliable, cost-effective cloud option exists." What this means is that, if you're a CIO, whatever form you want to deliver cloud computing in, it had better be ready in 2011. Extended rollout plans based on lengthy private cloud initiatives won't cut it in the fervid rush to deploy cloud computing.

I see more vendor hype and end user wishful thinking on this topic than any other in cloud computing. Vendors breezily assert and end users blithely repeat that the future will be applications effortlessly, transparently, and automatically migrating between internal IT infrastructures and external cloud providers.

No cloud vendor, no matter how large or smart, can repeal the laws of physics, and migrating workloads and (especially) data between sites confronts the issue of "the skinny straw," which is the fact that the connectivity between internal sites and public cloud providers is much lower than that within either of those environments.

Furthermore, supporting seamless migration requires a sophisticated IT infrastructure and operations capability, which translates into investment and skill building. While these factors can be procured or created, it's not a trivial task to do so.

Both of these challenges will make IT executives realize that the all-moving hybrid cloud strategy is overly ambitious and needs to be scaled back. Trying to implement such a vision, for many organizations, will prove to be "".