Cloud computing is one of those things that has been set to change the business world for a few years. When most heavily hyped, paradigm shifting arrive on the scene there will always be those that hold back, fearful of the change it will bring, unwilling to move out of their comfort zone. If the potential benefits are sufficiently large however many will tentatively make the move.
Social business expert highlights 8 ways that cloud computing will change the business landscape:
- The creation of a new generation of products and services.
- A new lightweight form of real-time partnerships and outsourcing with IT suppliers.
- A new awareness and leverage of the greater Internet and Web 2.0 in particular.
- A reconciliation of traditional SOA with the cloud and other emerging IT models.
- The rise of new industry leaders and IT vendors.
- More self-service IT from the business-side.
- More tolerance for innovation and experimentation from businesses.
- The slow-moving, dinosaur firms will have trouble keeping up more nimble adopters and fast-followers.
If you're still not convinced, the Process Excellence Network are hosting a webinar next month that aims to lift the fog on cloud computing and how it can help your business. It's a free event running on the 7th March. Well worth checking out if you're interested in the potential benefits of cloud computing. To register visit the link below.
Cloud computing is becoming part of the enterprise more and more. Customers every day are considering the cloud as a way to drive new business opps and it's becoming a reality for many. You really do need to start the move to the cloud to stay a viable business in today's climate where the slightest edge means everything.
It's one of those things that seems a no brainer to me and will only get bigger. If people decide to bury their head in the sand that's their problem. Will sign up to the webinar though. Sounds interesting.
I'm a big fan of Cloud Computing myself, but a cautionery tale should be drawn from MegaUpload being closed down this week.
People who've genuinely uploaded their own content are finding that this will now be deleted, because the hosting companies who store MU data aren't being paid and so will be deleting the content they store for non-payment.
This raises the issue of who stores and controls your data in the long term and how easily you're able to retrieve this in the event of a cloud firm going bust or how easily it's moved it you want to change cloud providers.
Don't forget that as this is a new market will lots of start-ups appearing all the time, there's a good chance that many of these will merge or go bust in the first few years before stability is achieved in the market.
So you have to ensure that any agreement you sign covers you for this.
(Adi – good post as always)
That's a very good point Steven. The more consumer based social companies really don't do this very well at all. Getting your data out of Facebook for instance is next to impossible.
One would hope that things are significantly better in the enterprise market though. Like you say, it's essential that the customer owns all of the data rather than the vendor.
As a technology guy, I see a lot of hype surrounding "the cloud." I think the first thing to observe is that cloud computing isn't something that has just suddenly appeared in the last few years. Cloud computing is made up of an number of transitions which have been going on for quite some time: from desktop to web-based applications, from in-house implementation to hosted platforms, from closed applications to open API's, and from dedicated hardware to virtual machines. What we are seeing over the past few years is the cumulative effect of these transitions combining, along with more maturity in the underlying technologies.
But just like any over-hyped technology, the cloud is not a silver bullet. For example, there are applications that are not well-suited to a web-based approach — e.g. those which require significant data transfer, or which are latency sensitive. And as others have noted above, issues of data ownership, privacy, and security have not yet moved into the "maturity phase."
So, yes, you need to consider the cloud when contemplating rolling out new IT functionality. But make sure you clearly understand what your requirements are, and the advantages/disadvantages that cloud solutions bring to bear on them.