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Time to reveal cloud's silver upside

Vendors should focus more on promoting the business benefits of cloud. We should not be spending all of our time on the defensive, letting objections about security, reliability and governance dominate the conversation.
Written by Phil Wainewright, Contributor

Too much of the discussion around cloud computing and SaaS is focussed on the technology and not enough emphasis is placed on the business results that can be achieved from going to the cloud. The tech industry repeatedly makes this mistake, allowing itself to get dragged into discussing the relative merits of different technology implementations while completely missing the bigger picture of why people are actually going to buy and implement the stuff.

Therefore I've set myself a new task of going out and evangelizing to business people why they should adopt cloud computing and services. It's not simply about cloud computing being faster, cheaper, better than conventional platforms. More than all of that, cloud computing, when it's done right, frees businesses to plug into all the rich resources of the global Web to connect and interact in real-time with their employees, partners and customers in ways that give them huge competitive advantages. You can hear me expanding on this message in this webinar recorded in August. At a follow-up event in London last week, I met some of the CIOs who are using the cloud to transform the way their businesses operate. Vendors and their PR teams please note: don't pitch me technology stories, tell me how customers are transforming their businesses by harnessing the cloud. There are more and more of these stories about, and they deserve to be heard.

We should not be spending all of our time being defensive about cloud, letting objections about security, reliability and governance dominate the conversation. These are important matters, but they can be answered and dealt with. Instead, let's promote the upside of cloud. It's more than a silver lining, it's a whole new dawn of unprecedented potential for business advantage, one that transforms an enterprise's internal operations and external opportunities.

If you're based in London, let me draw your attention to a couple more events where I believe the positive benefits for enterprises of adopting the cloud will shine through. This Wednesday 22 September, EuroCloud UK is having a member meeting to hear some enterprise end user perspectives on cloud. Then in October, the SIIA's OnDemand Europe conference comes to London — by the way, early bird pricing ends today. I'll be moderating panels on Selecting the Right Cloud Platform and on Integrating in the Cloud, and at the end of the SIIA event, attendees will be able to join a EuroCloud UK member meeting on Building Confidence in the Cloud.

If you're not in London, you can catch a flavor of my upbeat message on October 12, when I'll be presenting a session in the Focus online summit on Breaking Through Cloud Computing. The title of my session: How the Cloud Transforms IT From Villains into Heroes.

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