“What is the cloud and what can it offer service providers?” That is this question Melanie Posey addressed in “Public clouds trends,” the first presentation at the second day of Parallels Summit 2010.
Hosting and telecom markets research director at IDC, Posey knows that there are multiple dimensions to the cloud, however, it’s best to look at the cloud as an evolution, not a revolution. It’s easier, better, and faster, than previous outsourced hosting solutions. But there really is a lot of commonality with pre-existing models — even the telephone system could be seen as a similar outsourced IT system.
Cloud services are those that are delivered and consumed in real time over the Internet. Sure, the usage based pricing model is an element of many cloud services, but Posey says that people get too caught up in that pricing model — it’s really about proving access to capabilities, and this lets businesses gain access to new capabilities that they perhaps wouldn’t be able to use or afford otherwise.
The cloud, of course, is continuing to evolve, and it seems that cutting edge cloud services are those that are “build it yourself,” and “manage it yourself” solutions.
Posey referenced Geoffery a. Moore’s “crossing the chasm” model of the adoption of innovation diffusion, which has had a significant and lasting impact on high tech entrepreneurship. Using Moore’s framework, Posey says that the cloud is currently in between the “early adopters” stage and the mainstream, leaving a tremendous amount of potential still to come.
While those on the cusp of IT innovations are already quite familiar with the cloud, there’s still a ways to go before it hits primetime. For instance, familiarity of cloud solutions is high in the Asia-Pacific region, but opinion is low. Some of the reasons are that there are few cloud providers in the region, internal resistance (from IT managers that are against any form of outsourcing), and that people simply think that the cloud’s nothing new.
The last point, Posey notes, can actually be an opportunity to market cloud solutions because companies are more likely to adopt familiar technologies that they think they understand, but that also let their company do more.
The cloud’s position in Europe is decidedly better, Posey says, with most companies having used one cloud service or another. “The UK is in the forefront of a lot of this cloud adoption,” she says. The UK, according to polls, leads Europe in adopting more than one cloud service.
Posey sees that, while large businesses might use cloud for some parts of their businesses, in some ways it benefits SMBs exponentially more. The cloud lets SMBs get and pay for only the services they need when they need them.
For SMBs, Posey says, “You either go to a service provider,” she pauses, “or go without it.”
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