Are there benefits to being “in the cloud”?
Posted by Len Diana on Wed, Jun 22, 2011 @ 03:52 PM
Being “in the cloud” seems to be the rage right now. There are many consumer based applications that are cloud-based but business applications seem to be slower to catch on. When you think of it, Facebook, Amazon, and all your free email services are all cloud-based applications. One of the few successful business applications that many have heard of is Salesforce.com. Cloud applications will only be successful if they offer real benefits. Amazon’s CTO Werner Vogels speaking at the State of the Cloud address at GigaOm’s Structure conference on Monday argued “the cloud has nothing to do with technology,” and basically “is defined by all its benefits.” So you may ask, “what are some of the benefits for businesses?” Some of them are:
- Lower capital investments and constraints
- Reduced operational costs
- Increased agility
- Accessibility and scalability
And this is just a short simple list. Many Enterprise level businesses are moving more and more of their businesses to the cloud. Gaurav Dillon, CEO of Snaplogic, said during the keynote of Monday’s GigaOm’s Structure conference that we’re “seeing smart companies move their business tasks onto the cloud,” and that they want a “collection of services – not a stack.” It will also prove successful for businesses if the cloud can allocate “services that come together to solve overall business problems.” Dell, IBM, Microsoft and a host of others are shifting resources to help businesses get in “the cloud”. In a recent article on CNBC.com, which referenced a NY Times article, says that “the marketing of the cloud is way ahead of real offerings by suppliers and its adoption by business customers.” Many small or medium size businesses right now don’t see a benefit to being cloud-based except for maybe a CRM since their sales force might be all over the country or world. If your business has benefited by being in the cloud, share what applications have made sense for you.
