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Business IT and cloud computing
IT executives, in organizations of all sizes, are growing more familiar with “cloud computing”, the made-up expression which illustrates a particular phenomenon where companies can run almost every information system they rely on without owning any tech equipment.
Businesses can therefore rent access to applications and IT infrastructure that reside on the internet, paying for them on either a subscription -or- a per-use basis while providing employees with access to information from anywhere, at any time, with nothing more than a connected device.
Wether IT folks are for the cloud or not, the very idea sounds great. No more headaches for software updates, no more server farms to monitor, no more growing storage requirements or any such “technical” worries. The cloud is sold as infinitely expandable so a typical “cloud-enabled” company can focus on what it does best while leaving the data management to the cloud-centric professionals.
In itself, this is a significant shift in the way the internet is used but the cloud story gets even more interesting when you consider it may hold the promise for transforming the role of IT within the business. Letting an external service provider sweat issues like server capacity, networked storage and bandwidth means the internal IT staff (on the company payroll) may shed some “hands-on” weight while filling new positions with IT strategists who worry more about data accessibility than adding more hard drives to the company data center.
This colossal shift isn’t going to happen overnight and chances are IT’s more technical bunch will likely leave companies to go work for the service providers, catering to the growing crowd of cloud-minded companies.
While we usually think of business computing as a desktop computer thing, cloud computing may also prove to be an ideal strategy for reaping the full benefits that mobile devices, when properly used, can deliver, namely by allowing companies to essentially push their IT environment out to employees rather than employees having to get access to the IT environment.
The cloud computing future may hold many promises but theory can sometimes hit a brick wall named “reality”. When it comes to cloud computing, just because it holds promises doesn’t mean it’s going to translate in practical solutions for real business tech challenges — at least, not anytime soon.
If anything, cloud computing serves as a reminder that computing models constantly evolve. As companies face increasing pressure to be more agile than the competition, they’ll be forced to adapt to changing computing models to stay competitive… and profitable.
For those who feel like cloud computing is their thing, there are security risks which can’t be swept under the proverbial rug. For instance, how would you feel if your companies’ data was dumped alongside other companies’ data? What happens if a technical glitch grants another company full access to your data? Will you even be warned it happened? Relying on strangers to handle your data is a typical C-level decision and it’s not just about the money savings, either.
Nevertheless, some companies are happy to deal with the glitches in exchange for the potential benefits of cloud computing. Big players like Salesforce (think: SaaS) and NetSuite (ERP, CRM, e-commerce), Amazon with its S3 and Elastic Compute Cloud offerings as well as IBM and Google (Google Apps, anyone?) are paving the way for a more dynamic cloud computing future.
The final on cloud computing might be that in the event this cloud thing sticks, it’ll help IT transform from a perceived technology cost center into a strategic business asset as companies likely apply hybrid models that lie between the proprietary data centers (for highly critical data) and the cloud (for everything else).
If anything, we’re seeing the cloud computing phenomenon unfold before our very eyes and for many venturing entrepreneurs, this, among other things, could come to be known as yet another web-related, big and fluffly cumulus-sized, opportunity.
Tags: cloud computing, outsourced hosting, servers, storage, saas, erp, crm, e-commerce, infrastructure
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