I've of course, been trying to keep track of press coverage relating to this week's triumph at the Microsoft bizspark summit and one thing that keeps popping up again and again is people analysing the cloud as a thing of the future. 'The cloud revolution is coming', 'companies are banking on the cloud taking off', 'preparing for the cloud shift' were just some quotes taken from bloggers reviewing the event. But it's wrong to suggest the cloud is simply something in the distance, that organisations will simply have to deal with. It's here now! And it's a help, not a hindrance!
The one barrier to entry is said, time and time again, to be security worries. Banks and the like are concerned that moving data to the cloud will ultimately anger customers and raise security alarms. Why is it then, that in the GFI Software SME Technology Report 2010, only 12% of 250 sme's said high security risks were the principal barrier to adoption. What was more telling from the report was that 64% of senior business decision makers did not fully understand the term cloud computing.
That is the real barrier. Especially in the current financial climate, cloud computing is there to improve processes, yet the very thought of doing something about it strikes absolute terror into those who wish things could just always stay the same. Yesterday, Sean Kelley, global CIO for Deutsche Asset Management was appointed chairman of the Enterprise Cloud Leadership Council, an alliance set up to promote cloud services uptake. The list of members include Alcatel-Lucent, Amdocs, AT&T, BT, CA, Cisco, EMC, HP, IBM, Microsoft, Nokia Siemens Networks, Telecom Italia and Telstra.
The awareness of just how powerful cloud computing can be is clearly there (the aforementioned companies would not be investing this sort of time into it if not), the understanding is what keeps pushing the cloud into the distance, onto the 'to do' pile. It's here now, so why not make the most of it.
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