It is interesting to follow the discussion on Cloud Computing among the various media outlets/blogs. On any given day the opinions range from specific enterprise IT impacts to plan for, to declarations that the “cloud” is just the latest in a long line of failed IT buzzwords, to passionate reader comments decrying the potential loss of control/ownership and new security concerns.
My previous takes here. Regardless of when major cloud computing vendors are pronounced enterprise-ready by IT decision makers, there are a couple of changes that will occur, either as part of an organization’s move to a cloud environment, or as a reaction to it being available elsewhere:
- Increased pricing transparency for the business
- More user control/influence in the environment
These sound like positive developments to me. Gary Orenstein at GigaOM has a new post titled Enterprise Impact of Cloud Computing, in which he mentions the pricing and user control benefits:
The emergence of near-universal pricing transparency is an industry first, as far as I can tell. And the opportunity for individual contributors to scope and deploy applications that suit unique needs completely changes the potential growth path of commercially available applications.
These forces will shape the enterprise like never before, breaking down pricing obscurity and bypassing controlled application deployments. With both constraints removed, we have a lot of decision-making ahead of us.
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