What Does “the Cloud” Mean for Business?

An Industry Insight by Daptiv

There’s a lot of buzz about “cloud computing” these days. It seems like the perfect answer to many businesses challenges – no software to install, all you need is a browser, applications are secure and easy to access. But what does this mean for businesses? Should you be using consumer web tools for business? By Tim Lowe, VP of Marketing at Daptiv

The web leads the way
Consumers’ experience of the Internet has morphed radically over just the past couple of years. The Web 2.0 experience has changed how we use the Internet and changed our expectations for technology in general. We now love Flickr and Facebook, Digg and Twitter. These experiences have lead everyone that works in business (because we’re all consumers too) to re-think the nature of the tools they have at their disposal for doing work. Why do I have to struggle with my office productivity tools when the websites I use for fun, pictures, and music just work? The answer is that business technology has some more difficult challenges to solve than consumer technology. How do we make sure that data is protected? How can I allow my teams of workers access to tools they like to use, but still have some element of control that supports my company’s policies and mandates? Is it really ok to have my data stored somewhere “in the cloud”?

Businesses need more
What’s emerging is a “business cloud”. Unlike the Wild West of the consumer internet, the business cloud will offer organizations tools and experiences that feature the best of the Web 2.0 experience while also providing elements that are important to business like control, visibility and business-class security.

You may have seen in your own business that your youngest employees, the generation of people just entering the workforce, have very different expectations and work patterns than people who entered the workforce in the 80s or 90s. They have a do-it-yourself mentality, and expect to be able to hit a website, do cool stuff that works for them, and own both their content and the sharing of their content with others. Some of this is great for business, but it needs an additional layer of reality. It’s just not ok to have all business documents and data out in the open. Some things are for internal audiences and some are for business partners, some should not be shared beyond a small internal team. This is where the challenge of Web 2.0 hits business. For businesses to take advantage of the great things Web 2.0 provides – easy to use, intuitive interfaces, the ability to share and collaborate with far less friction than traditional installed software tools, the ability to modify and quickly create new applications and content that will help your business – they need to be balanced with the ability to control access, to enforce policies and ideally the ability to see across the work of individuals and teams to identify trends, take advantage of synergies and harvest great ideas and best practices for use in other parts of the business.

You should have the choice
Every organization has its own threshold or comfortable position on the freedom-control continuum. Some organizations are happy to embrace the freedom end of the continuum because of the benefits in creativity and sharing it provides. Other organizations – especially in certain industries – may be mandated or regulated to enforce strict control mechanisms. Of course, each organization must take into account its own culture and experience in deciding where they will draw the line. Business software in the Web 2.0 world needs to embrace and accommodate this need. That’s where the business cloud comes in. The answer for business is not to let every business process and every document sit in consumer websites and social networks, but to look for providers that are trusted business partners, that can provide you with both the rich and appealing tools and experiences of web software on-demand and mechanisms for your organization to make its own choice on where to set the bar on freedom, control, security and visibility.