by Jeffrey Walker
| Jul 31, 2014
Over the past 5 years we’ve seen an amazing amount of growth of major disruptive technologies in mobile, information, collaboration, and cloud. Each area has spawned new and amazing capabilities that have transformed our lives, the way we communicate, how we consume our news and access information, and the way we work. Otherwise known as the Nexus of Forces, these focus areas and how they interrelate together help us to understand how technology is revolutionizing business and society today at all levels.
The last one, cloud computing, has exerted more influence on the business side of IT than any other single technology. Just imagine for a moment what life was like in a traditional IT shop 10 years ago. Enterprise software installation, licensing and compliance, on premise servers, vendors, consultants, maintenance – and all to the tune of thousands of dollars in annual overhead.
Now, on the other hand, any business unit with a credit card can connect to a cloud-hosted service in less than 5 minutes for a fraction of the cost and no setup headaches. The impact across IT is truly revolutionary and we can expect this to continue exponentially. We can also anticipate the day soon when IT shops are totally hardware free and primarily operate as consulting arms to the business units.
To be sure, cloud is not some mysterious term. It primarily means delivery of IT services via the internet, on demand. In other words, the cloud is really jargon for how the digital world works today and how businesses are leveraging online services. If you’re using Twitter, Gmail, or Dropbox then you’re a cloud user.
From the business side, there are three major components of the cloud computing stack:
* SaaS applications are designed for end-users and delivered over the web (Salesforce, Gmail)
* PaaS is the set of tools and services designed to make coding and deploying those applications quick and efficient (Windows Azure, Google App Engine)
* IaaS is the hardware and software that powers it all – servers, storage, networks, operating systems (Amazon Web Services, Rackspace)
A common expression in discussions about the cloud is ‘ubiquitous’ – which means continuous access anytime, anywhere, anyhow. Customers now expect to purchase products, search for services, and get quotes 24 hours a day, 7 days a week – whether at home, on the job, or in a jet flying across country. Cloud is all about gaining the fastest access to all goods and services from any device that can reach the internet, without having to install software or connecting directly to a server. And this kind of instant access should be of primary interest to businesses today who are concerned about staying ahead of the market and their competition. Customer expectations are higher than ever and they are not going to wait if your website is down for maintenance.
Research indicates that cloud adoption is steadily growing among SMBs. For example, in the U.S. the cloud market is expected to reach $32 billion by the beginning of 2016, representing a 19 percent year-over-year growth rate from $18.9 billion early in 2013.
Onboarding your organization into the cloud will be a key differentiator that will help keep a competitive edge in today’s fast-paced market. If your business hasn’t adopted cloud yet then it’s already behind the curve. It’s not too late to catch up, but you’ll need to act fast!
In the rest of this series we will outline some guidelines to ensure that your business “is in the clouds” and readily adopting the latest techniques to provide your customers with ‘ubiquitous’ access to information, products, and services.
Join us back here tomorrow as we continue the discussion.
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