Yesterday's announcements about Google Chrome throws further confusion into the traditional software world as the young search/advertising giant throws its hat into the operating system arena. Cloud is, it seems, posting similar competitive challenges into the traditional software vendor world as it is into the client-side IT management domain. What does the future hold for the likes of Lotus, Microsoft, Oracle and Adobe?
The first big challenge is coping with the "doing business on Facebook" syndrome, which is typified when an individual finds a Cloud service on their own to either substitute for a corporate service, or to fill an otherwise unfulfilled need. Anyone who had access to the Internet (and with the rise of mobile, that is not necessarily the sanctioned corporate Internet of old) can make their own decisions about what services are needed to meet their own business requirements. To some extent this is nothing new. The shared guilty secret of the IT and Finance departments is the amount of crucial business logical and data that is tied up in Excel spreadsheets (despite all that has been spent on ERP systems over the years). The Cloud multiplies this issue exponentially.
Just re-purposing existing products to fit a Cloud delivery model is unlikely to have long-term gain. One of the key reasons why individuals are already using (often free) Cloud services is because they tend to allow work to take place across the boundaries of organisations which is the reality of modern organisations, but terribly counter-cultural to both IT and Information Security people. Multi-tenanted services are the key here.
And in a world where everyone becomes their own CIO, big tech companies need to broaden their sphere of influence. That means across the boardroom, but also down into the organisation. Especially in the domain of collaboration, marketing needs to reach everyone (witness the Join.Me campaign currently at at least Waterloo Station).
But Cloud is also going to mean lower revenues for big tech companies, and the choice of cannabalising existing revenue streams, or just watch them bleed dry is going to be the hardest one in the next couple of years. But survival for the big firms is likely to come in the way of acquisition rather than internal innovation – and competition for acquiring the start ups will come from both the well established tech firms, and newer Cloud entrants alike.
mmitII 