I recently participated in an online webcast panel discussion on the impact of cloud computing on IT. This has just been posted as an on demand webcast, and if you’re interested, you can watch it here.
On the surface, cloud computing would seem a threat if you’re involved in infrastructure. However, my take on this is that it’s an opportunity for IT folks to focus less on “plumbing” related things, and more on things that will drive true business value, making themselves that much more important to the organization. The reality is that IT services are constantly being commoditized. Networking used to be a big deal, and now it’s taken for granted. Ray Noorda (the founder of Novell) once said “where there’s mystery, there’s margin”. It’s too bad that his company didn’t keep chasing the mysterious – they were recently acquired by Attachmate.
Cloud computing is coming to your business, in one form or another. At the very least, if you’re in IT, you want to figure out how you’re going to deal with it. You can get on the bus,get out of the way,but if you just stand there like a deer in the headlights, you’ll get run over.
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