Whether you may like it or not, the cloud, in all its forms, is here to stay. Internet based services, accessed via a browser etc bring a huge range of technical, administrative, cost and business advantages. That is not to say that on-premise technologies are not relevant or necessary due to current laws, governance and Government/industry policies. But the co-existence of both cloud and on-premise services is certainly the pattern for the coming years.
At Salem we find it exciting how many clients (both large and small) are now positively looking at cloud-based services as part of their over-arching strategy and also how many business stakeholders are bi-passing IT to harness cloud services directly. Let us not forget that many business units and departments have their own budgets independent of IT and how many can adopt a business service in the cloud without any form of IT input. Now clearly this can lead to cloud sprawl and disconnected services driven by disparate business audiences. Therefore from an IT perspective it is now very wise and timely to consider developing an off-premise strategy that coordinates the fast pace of business change.
It is often cited that IT departments are too slow to react to ever-changing business practices or evolution. For example, a business unit wishes to share information with an external marketing agency, oh and they need to do it by next week. IT needs to have a cloud strategy to facilitate almost on request. If they do not, the business is likely to bi-pass IT and go straight to a service provider for cloud delivery. We have seen this very often as a scenario. We have also seen the scenario where IT uses 'security' as the method by which business adoption of the cloud, is restricted or prevented - whilst IT 'catches up'. This is no more than an excuse in most cases and simply pushes the business audience further away. It is no surpise therefore that business divisions simply buy a cloud-based service when and if they can as it frees them from the slow process of IT department (often frighteningly-slow) service facilitation.
We could even go as far as reminding IT audiences that, generally, they exist primarly to service business audiences, goals, targets, drivers and business ambitions - and do not exist for their own sake. Sadly this is not fully understood in some organisations where IT has matured into a practice that simply appears to exist for its own sake and has created a 'policy machine' around itself as a protective shell (change management and security being often cited as two common examples). This is now completely at odds with the dynamics of cloud-based services. If IT cannot cater to business requirements, the business may consider that it can do without internal IT altogether - we have already seen this stated in some very large organisations.
So cloud-based services free up a typical business division from the drawn out processes that traditional IT organisations have created. Business users are quickly discovering that service administration overheads are low, licensing is relatively cheap, costs are low, services are up and running within hours or days and that the services do what they say on the tin - they simply work. This is why cloud is being seen within business communities as they way to go.
Let us also not forget that the typical business user is surrounded by cloud-based services at home. They use Facebook as a part of daily life. Linked-in is now a necessarry business tool. They are accessing web based email and have been doing so often without any form of issue for more than a decade without suffering down-time. A typical business user does not fear losing data in the cloud and probably has cloud-hosted emails dating back years. Cloud upgrades are fully understood as a necessary evil (think how Facebook changes it's user interface periodically) but then again a business user does not need to worry about technology updatesc - they simply happen when they happen.
So back to SharePoint. For organisations now moving to SharePoint there are some very compelling reasons why cloud based SharePoint services are the way to go, particularly for collaboration with external audiences. From a cost perspective seat license costs make perfect sense, the services simply work and a business user feels emancipated from laborious IT processes. Better an It department identifies a cloud strategy than simply ignoring it. Tie SharePoint in with other Microsoft cloud service such as Lync, Office online and Outlook and it becomes difficult for a business customer to understand why one would wish to go any other route. They can sign up and within minutes the service is there, ready to go. When registering for Office 365 beta, we found we were up and running with a range of integrated services within 5 minutes. No IT department can beat that from a standing start!
However we know that cloud services for internal audiences is not always the number one choice for a variety of reasons. Unless one is considering a private cloud solution then the public services can feel restrictive due to a lack of support for developed custom services. However what we find interesting is that clients actually rather like and accept that public cloud service features are presented a certain (fixed?) way and in many ways adopt far faster due to the initial immediate recognition that this service simply works 'as it is'. In other words many business clients will trade off customisation for fast service feature-rich delivery.
With the advent of Office365 replacing BPOS, now is definitely the time to consider a cloud strategy and excite your business audiences with the prospect not only of on-demand business services, delivered almost instantly, but services that can be accessed on the move easily and services that fit in with the modern lifestyle of social-led services. A business user wants to feel inspired by the company they choose to work for and the latest technologies accessible quickly and efficiently is definitely one way to achieve that feeling.
SharePoint in the cloud - we say, bring it on !
