Cloud Computing Will Spawn IT Experimentation


Of course cloud computing promises to save businesses money.

But its simplicity and ease of use also may spawn an unprecedented increase in business experimentation.

This compelling thesis comes from analyst Charles Burns, a research vice president at Saugatuck Technology, and it just might prove itself out.

With cloud’s lower cost, “you can afford to have a lot of (project) failures” without the bottom line suffering, Burns said Thursday at Navigating the Cloud, a discussion sponsored by IBM.

Burns argues that cloud computing is likely to change every company’s business – dismissing the deep-seated debate around the veracity and historical roots of the emerging computing scheme.

He calls cloud computing pragmatic, whether or not it is a follow-on to the autocratic computing structure of the mainframe era.
In a sense, it doesn’t matter. It can save companies money, shorten the development time of new applications, allow small business to better meet Sarbanes-Oxley requirements and shift capital expenses to operating expenses with software as a service.

Its ease of use is still evolving (there are no standards in place for interoperability so every cloud implementation is different.) But as simplicity improves, business department experimentation will take place on the cheap, says Burns.

At first this will seem like a threat to IT managers fearing a loss of control. But they too will see a bright light.

Overtime, they will be able to shift staff from server and disk array maintenance to high-level business support.

That should make everyone happy. But don’t hold your breath. Standards are nowhere in sight and the ease of use necessary for widespread experimentation is a work in progress.