Learning Points from 6 Months of Life in Cloud Computing

Over the past six months I have taken a diversion away from my normal discipline of Enterprise Architecture to build up a Cloud Computing practice for my current employer. My focus has been on Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Force.com rather than my more normal Zachman, TOGAF, governance and architecture models. As a result I haven't posted much on enterprise architecture recently but I have learned a great deal. One of the most important things I have learnt is that many enterprises are really not ready to move to the cloud in any meaningful way. Yes, they might run the odd pilot to test the water but the implementation costs of most cloud projects mean that the ROI is just not there in the short term. The recognition that they can reduce their operational costs significantly in the longer term doesn't seem to be important enough quite yet.

Another learning point for me is that even allowing for the potential cost savings in the longer term, the leveraged platform nature of many cloud solutions means that there will be enough of a requirements gap to make most enterprises think twice before moving to the cloud. Often, it isn't the functional requirements that cause the problem, it is non-functional aspects like compliance, privacy, service and data location and even data sovereignty concerns that create the real adoption barrier. No doubt this will change over the medium term but it won't be this year.

Looking further ahead, I can see organisations initiating pilots this year but I can't see any large scale corporate adoptions until the tail end of this year and probably more so in 2010. In my view, the perception of the enterprise is that the cloud is just not quite there yet...