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.
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