Trends: What Are the Ramifications for IT in a New Cloud-Based World?
By Karla Robinson
August 15, 2012
August 15, 2012
- Buying the latest technological system used to mean buying a competitive edge on rival companies — but no more.
- “Without question, some start-ups are producing cutting-edge technology and some customers are taking advantage of their wares to one-up rivals,” Businessweek reports. “On the whole, however, corporations now seem to prefer, whenever practical, to rent the same computing services their rivals do, rather than try to build custom systems.”
- Nick Carr predicted this phenomenon back in May 2003 with the publication of his Harvard Business Review article “IT Doesn’t Matter,” which was met with a strong backlash.
- “The very companies that bashed Carr back in the day did very little to prepare for the cloud-computing era,” the article states. “Technology giants such as Oracle, SAP, and IBM failed to create attractive Web-service versions of their major software franchises, while HP, Dell, and others opted not to rent out computing power to their customers. Only recently has this started to change in a meaningful way.”
- The start-ups that have been successful in the cloud, like Box and Salesforce, aren’t looking to sell to these bigger, older companies. At least not yet, the article suggests.
- “The bad news for the big guys is that the cloud companies have shown a major reluctance to being acquired,” according to the article. “It’ll be interesting to see which cloud high-flyer gives in first — and just how high that acquisition price will be.”
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