I attended an AITP group meeting this week on the two hot topics of the moment: Cloud Computing and Social Media Marketing. The speakers are known, respected representatives of their fields, but on the Cloud Computing side I have to say I was less than impressed.
The message was: this is the next big thing and I’m on the forefront of it and you need to pay attention to it. But what, exactly, are we talking about?
Several of my colleagues in the audience asked excellent if pointed questions, like: how is this different that what we are doing now? Is this not still just a make/buy decision with different parameters? How do I safeguard my proprietary and customer data if I don’t know exactly where it resides and what my Cloud provider’s processes are? Whose fault is it if my data is compromised or I can’t get at it to do business?
This last one is easy to answer, since the advent of Cloud Computing doesn’t change things: you are. If you’re the CIO of a corporation, you are responsible for the safety and sanctity of the company’s data. It does not matter whether you decide to keep it in house on a server you can see or farm it out to Amazon or Force.com or whatever, or something in between.
It seems to me that though we have new technologies every month to consider as tools to do business, the fundamental issues don’t change. Perhaps my negative reaction to the presentations stems more from the idea that the term “game change” equates to a complete overhaul of everything.
Cloud Computing clearly has some excellent opportunities and potential cost-savings. It is also, as one of the presenters pointed out, the beginning of the realization, finally, of the true promise of the Internet. It’s very exciting to consider the kinds of gains we can make in our ability to scale, to react to business needs and changes quickly, and enable new ways to collaborate in a global marketplace. But my colleague who asked if things really are the same is right. We still need to look at the costs, benefits and risks of the alternatives for performing every business process we execute. Some things lend themselves very well to being put in the cloud. For others it will make sense to keep them in-house. And of course it’s not a yes/no decision, there is a range of possibilities. Don’t throw away your common sense, IT professionals. That is still very much in demand no matter what “game changing” new thing is being hyped.
Social Media Marketing next.
