So here we are - 2009, the year of the credit crunch, the BIG
recession and The Cloud. Or at least that's the theory. It was
interesting over Christmas to see so many end of year/predictions for
next year round-ups that all began with some form of '2009 is the year
Cloud Computing goes mainstream'.

Clearly it's an argument that we buy into at BusinessCloud9 - hence
this new portal and community dedicated to all things Cloud-y! It's an
interesting thesis to pitch though, this notion that Cloud Computing is
a relatively recession-friendly technology movement. That's an idea
that many of the leading SaaS vendors were kicking around in 2008 as
the storm clouds of recession gathered, but in many cases their own
financial results didn't seem to get the pick up that this theory
suggests they should. 

Of course there's bound to be a transition point, some period during
which all spending stops or slows down on big ticket enterprise on
premise application deployments as CEOs and CFOs struggle to balance
the books. But large organisations - especially those actively planning
for the day after the recession! - cannot afford to stop spending money
on new systems and functionality, however much the bean counters want
them to. 

We've already seen plenty of examples of SaaS creeping into
organisations by stealth. It happens when the sales department needs a
new module and can't wait until finance and IT free up resources for
that SAP or Oracle extension, so they slip in some Salesforce.com or
some NetSuite to get something up and running to fit their needs. Once
it's inside the organisation. SaaS then spreads out into other areas of
the business, proving its worth through its ROI. 

This hasn't pleased all CIOs unfortunately who see this as a threat
to their centralised IT control. One Gartner analyst tells an amusing
anecdote about an unnamed organisation where the CIO spends a large
amount of his time running round the company attempting to drive out
rogue SaaS deployments, for all the world like some demented pest
control exterminator in pursuit of a cockroach infestation. This will
be one of the more interesting tests for Cloud Computing this year: how
many CIOs will step up to the mark and embrace it as an opportunity
rather than a perceived threat? 

There are an increasing number of CIOs who are setting an example
and at some major international organisations. We'll be devoting more
attention to these individuals in the coming months as BusinessCloud9
expands, beginning this week with Japan Post, one of the world's
biggest Salesforce.com implementations.