I agree with your comment Greg, however I have found that for a large number of SMEs the technology most able to enable business growth is a cloud model! It offers the additional benfit of being exceptionally cost effective. I’m referring to managed desktop services here in particular.

Releasing your typical SME owner/director from the burden of technology (which pretty much every commercial enterprise has these days) means they are more able to focus on their business.

Couple that with the benefits of scalability and availability offered by the cloud and you have an intriguing proposition.

In terms of economics, why does an SME need to fund up-front the hardware, desktop software licensing, rack space and technical support, data backup/recovery management and all the rest of the typical IT service function when they can simply lease everything as a rented service? This not only introduces a great degree of flexibility (the “pay for what you use” approach) but also means the financial impact is spread throughout the trading year which helps enormously with cash flow (very important in these challenging economic times!)

However the grass is not always greener. The cloud is certainly more appropriate in some instances than others. Like all technologies it should not be considered in isolation and in many cases it probably will serve as an additional tier of IT services, however there is also a healthy market for “pure cloud” services.

I agree with your comment Greg, however I have found that for a large number of SMEs the technology most able to enable business growth is a cloud model! It offers the additional benfit of being exceptionally cost effective. I’m referring to managed desktop services here in particular.

Releasing your typical SME owner/director from the burden of technology (which pretty much every commercial enterprise has these days) means they are more able to focus on their business.

Couple that with the benefits of scalability and availability offered by the cloud and you have an intriguing proposition.

In terms of economics, why does an SME need to fund up-front the hardware, desktop software licensing, rack space and technical support, data backup/recovery management and all the rest of the typical IT service function when they can simply lease everything as a rented service? This not only introduces a great degree of flexibility (the “pay for what you use” approach) but also means the financial impact is spread throughout the trading year which helps enormously with cash flow (very important in these challenging economic times!)

However the grass is not always greener. The cloud is certainly more appropriate in some instances than others. Like all technologies it should not be considered in isolation and in many cases it probably will serve as an additional tier of IT services, however there is also a healthy market for “pure cloud” services.

Over on Steve Duplessie blog:
http://www.thebiggertruth.com/2009/09/reverse-cloud-economics/comment-page-1/#comment-351

Over on the Storage Networking Industry Site (May require registration):
http://www.linkedin.com/groupAnswers?viewQuestionAndAnswers=&gid=45867&discussionID=7646951&sik=1254343431610&trk=ug_qa_q&goback=%2Eana_45867_1254343431610_3_1

And Chuck Goolsbee among others:
http://chuck.goolsbee.org/archives/2474

Cheers – gs

Over on Steve Duplessie blog:
http://www.thebiggertruth.com/2009/09/reverse-cloud-economics/comment-page-1/#comment-351

Over on the Storage Networking Industry Site (May require registration):
http://www.linkedin.com/groupAnswers?viewQuestionAndAnswers=&gid=45867&discussionID=7646951&sik=1254343431610&trk=ug_qa_q&goback=%2Eana_45867_1254343431610_3_1

And Chuck Goolsbee among others:
http://chuck.goolsbee.org/archives/2474

Cheers – gs

Being a skeptic, and not really trusting the market, I raised the objections that without some widget to tie real value to, the bottom of Enron’s value could also not be firmly established.

Not everyone with a bit of IP to tout and a sales force can achieve the full potential value of the Cloud market. So the question going in is which of the providers will survive, and how do you avoid being the customer caught off guard when the sky clears?

Maybe even more important will be the hollowing out of what we’ve become accustomed to as the IT working class, as jobs are divied up between lower paying support organizations and fewer and fewer contract staff.

Being a skeptic, and not really trusting the market, I raised the objections that without some widget to tie real value to, the bottom of Enron’s value could also not be firmly established.

Not everyone with a bit of IP to tout and a sales force can achieve the full potential value of the Cloud market. So the question going in is which of the providers will survive, and how do you avoid being the customer caught off guard when the sky clears?

Maybe even more important will be the hollowing out of what we’ve become accustomed to as the IT working class, as jobs are divied up between lower paying support organizations and fewer and fewer contract staff.