When is a Cloud application not a real Cloud application
Zack Nelson of Netsuite has strong views on this – CRN interview with Zack Nelson.
“There are real clouds and fake clouds. The fake clouds are people who are taking existing technology and saying, ‘We can host it for you and that’s the cloud’.”
How can you tell a fake cloud from a real cloud? Nelson goes on to say …
“If the application is not web-native it’s not going to give you any of the benefits of the cloud. You’re not going to get any of this cost reduction, customization migration, or anytime, anywhere access because you are still using intermediary technology to access a hosted application.
We’ll take a closer look and let you know what we find.
How mature is Cloud computing?
When cloud applications first came to market, it was mainly through small scrappy software companies. Over time, the natural advantage of cloud applications has meant that established vendors have had to respond. Today, in virtually any software application category you will have a good cloud option, that makes “Why not the cloud?” a valid question.
On our CRM-Guidebooks site, we ask the intentions of CRM purchasers on cloud versus onsite. Across the survey group of over 800, 27% intended to deploy a cloud solution compared to 16% on-site and the largest group undecided at 57%.
When we look at the data by company size it skews a little more towards cloud. 36% of SMB’s are intending to deploy a cloud solution, with only 14% preparing for an on-site system. This 9% difference indicates that SMB’s are already asking “Why not the cloud?”
This was a CRM survey, a relatively simple application – it does not need to ‘touch’ many other systems. It can be a standalone sales or support system, when it does need integration it may be simply to a website or marketing system.
More complex systems like ERP/Accounting will need to ‘touch’ many more systems and have a larger integration need. Our sister site ERP-Guidebooks asks the same question, in this case only 18% looked to deploy ERP in the cloud, and 37.5% would deploy on-site.
ERP and CRM are only two categories of an ever expanding range of cloud solutions. Below is a Forrester chart on various cloud initiaitves thoughout APEJ. Download our Cloud Guidebook for more information.