The cloud is inevitable. Fear is inevitable. IT budget shrink is inevitable… but it will be in the right areas.
The sooner companies find great “cloud based” solution partners and come to realize the value of having another company manage, support, provide, deliver, backup and protect their information the better.
Investing in technology which will be antiquated or replaced by newer technology which is twice as fast, half the size and less costly within an 18 month cycle is hard to justify in a CAPEX model.
For the biggest of companies the real tough part and where the greatest fear lies is critical content management. The need for a “code red” level of responsiveness they can have control over or have guaranteed form an outsourced vendor is crucial for mass adoption of the “cloud” model.
Not just the speed to respond to crisis situations but fear also surrounds security, and encryption of their data. That coupled with trusting the network to be up and ready to handle the mass amounts of content and data which will traverse it, are of utmost importance.
The telecom and AAP providers must improve their guarantees of delivery, redundancy, latency and jitter. When the prices come down a “wee bit” more, and the latter happens with improved networks…watch out for the adoption rate of the “cloud”!
End of Day…everything is just around the corner from happening…and for all the right reasons.