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By James Finnan
A lesson Big Business did not learn from the consumer
markets.
When you look at the level of spending given to cutting-edge
technology, big business is probably first, followed by Government and then
followed by the consumer markets.
Interestingly enough, I read an article today in the New York Times
suggesting that “Yet it is increasingly evident they (Big Business) are not
driving the new ideas, excitement and power-house technology companies in the
ascent these days.” Forgive me for
begging to differ; but I should think IBM, Microsoft, Cisco, Dell, Juniper,
VMWare, Salesforce.com, SAP and other big businesses might have something to
say about this observation.
I tend to wonder if the author of the article (Steve Lohr) has
even heard of some the companies running the data centers that support the
internet’s shift to cloud based computing. He cites the PC revolution in the work place
as an example of where the consumer market has lead business. The implication
being… the consumer knows more than big business. Moreover, he suggested,
“established technology companies – and their business and government customers
– have trailed in cloud computing,” the author forgets there are issues for
both government and business. These issues run deeper than gaming or
distribution of social networking topics.
Issues like security of data.
That said, he proceeds to cite the billions of $ certain companies are
making to move products and services onto the cloud. It is true, companies like Google and Amazon
are leaders in the space and have gained a significant foothold by catering to consumer-based
solutions, but they also cater to business-based solutions. Perhaps he just got the title of his article
wrong since he points out certain truisms that contradict the title: The Business Market Plays Cloud Computing
Catch-Up.
Enterprise software has a long history of designing around a
distributed based nature. Think about
the business terminology that preceded the notion of cloud computing and
networking in general - token ring networks, Ethernet, distributed
applications, Arpanet (the forerunner of the internet), software as a service -
SOA, virtualization, horizontal scaling and the internet itself. The cloud is not a revolution, but an evolution. Innovation in the cloud does not rely solely
on consumer demand. It does represent an
interesting opportunity to accomplish certain tasks on a scale never before
imagined. In reviewing some research
from this very site back in 2009 CIOZone saw such momentum building for the
cloud - SaaS / Cloud Survey- Final Full
Report . The adoption rate suggested in these findings
alone is enough to keep my head in the cloud.
Seems to me big business is actually leading the consumer market in
driving demand for innovative cloud services and products, and will from this
point forward. I am wondering if others
agree with this basic premise and if Mr. Lohr would not agree himself.
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