The cloud: lessons from the future

Although cloud computing comprises many familiar components and ways of working, it is taking place in a radically new environment of ubiquitous fast network access and ever-changing security concerns.

The old financial and technical drivers of ever more powerful clients and increasingly capacious servers are less important when operating with systems that are intrinsically scalable, but there are still questions about how much local computing you will need and what you will use it for. There are new concerns over data location and regulatory compliance to go with the old worries about business continuity.

This video outlines the sort of questions that are worth asking when first planning the practical aspects of moving business IT functions into the cloud. It's not a tick-list or a proscriptive formula; it's a starting point for the new ways of thinking needed to make a success of cloud transition — which, over the next few years, will equate to success in business IT.