The Cloud and Software as a Service (SaaS) – a new disruptive model for IT

The Cloud and Software as a Service (SaaS) – a new disruptive model for IT

The Cloud or Software as a Service – a new disruptive model for IT.  A second topic covered by Paul Strong, VMWare CTO and a few others at the recent 2014 Gartner conference.

Obviously, cloud infrastructure is a big topic and I don’t propose to cover it much here but a couple of points were made at the Gartner Symposium that are worth thinking about.  I’ve lumped in SaaS in with the discussion. 

The first point?  That Cloud based infrastructure and SaaS are here to stay and will be disruptive to central IT

Cloud, some argue, is more of a marketing umbrella term than a product or technology and more of an evolution from what we had before i.e. external hosting.  Peter Thiel (founder of Paypal, first external investor Facebook) made that specific point during the Gartner conference.  Well, that might be right but I’m not sure the fact that it is more evolutionary than revolutionary will stop Cloud services being massively disruptive to traditional IT – like us.  Paul Strong asserts, like many others, that cloud is a new consumption model for IT.  People are and will be enticed by the consumption model – the experience of buying commodity and relatively cost effective IT infrastructure and SaaS will be attractive.   If central IT don’t get on board then business units (Faculties, Services) and everyone else will go straight to cloud providers.  The central IT barrier, whether it’s security or some other obstacle will be moved around.  So, this is a challenge that central IT teams need to respond to.  Again, remember, that's us.  Actually, we’re seeing this last bit already.  In the last few months there have been at least two proposals to purchase Cloud based systems made by our customers.  Suppliers, because it can be in their interest, tend to gloss over and simplify issues that a Cloud based solution might have.  And, we can think of quite a few potential issues like integration with our other systems, data exchange (it’s really not as easy as they say), security, reliability and lots more.

The second point?  That Cloud based infrastructure and SaaS will be beneficial and allow us to do more with less

The cheap(ish) and scalable resources offered by Cloud services could be transformational in providing effective IT for our University – so, it’s about getting the approach right with Cloud adoption rather than really questioning the eventual destination; at least for some of our IT services.

Dave Aron (Gartner Fellow) made the following point.  We need to watch out for disruptive change like Cloud.  Remember Encyclopaedia Britannica? $600m revenue in 1990.  Down to $195m revenue in 1995.  Now, they are effectively gone.  Obviously, Wikipedia pretty much took over most of what they did.

So, central IT – we don’t want to be another Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Amazon, as you are probably are aware, kick-started the Cloud agenda – after disrupting and transforming book selling and supply chain.  Paul argues that the same disruption and transformation is happening in Cloud, again driven by Amazon and Amazon Web Services.  Perhaps, looking back in five years – we will only really understand how disruptive cloud has been.   It is worth noting that not everyone entirely agrees with this assessment.     Most analysts seem to be a bit more nuanced.

So, Central / Enterprise IT, the challenge is to engage positively and work with SaaS and the Cloud to provide value.  Soon.

Gregor Waddell, Assistant Director