From Geoffrey Moore, author of the iconic Crossing the Chasm, an interesting article predicting the trend and impact of cloud computing. In summary his term “crossing the chasm” describes the adoption cycle of new technology, where “crossing” is the mainstream acceptance of a technology by the majority of target buyers. In this article he applies this to the different areas cloud computing can serve, predicting the sequence of adoption.
A few takeaway quotes and my commentary…
“The economics of cloud computing are so compelling it is clear, over time, that it will reengineer the entire landscape of enterprise IT”.
Agree, and see our next blog post about how Apps (enabled by cloud computing) are continuing to eat the world.
“Enterprise SaaS, with Salesforce.com being the canonical example, is the first enterprise cloud application to reach Main Street…. The big mistake early adopters made here was to overlay heavily customized processes and code onto this standard core, thereby undermining most of SaaS’s benefits. Later adopters should avoid making this mistake.”
I think he’s wrong about the mistake…(cost-justified) customization is an important feature to retain. Intuit updates QuickBase without breaking the customizations we (Advantage) build into QuickBase apps for our clients, and Salesforce and others need to do the same. Don’t tell business users it is a mistake to customize cloud-based apps to work they way they need to work.
“Collaboration. This, I believe, will be the next big thing for enterprise IT, what other folks have been calling the “consumerization of enterprise IT,” what I and my colleagues have been calling “systems of engagement.” The core idea here is to leverage all the collaborative technologies that have grown up in the Wild West of consumer computing—Facebook, Twitter, Skype, YouTube, and the like—and make them “enterprise ready,” a journey of civilizing that will take many iterations but will be justified by generating the next big productivity returns from IT. These will come from empowering the middle of the organization…to work across organizational, enterprise, and national boundaries to coordinate disaggregated supply chains and sales and service channels.”
In our experience QuickBase and Salesforce apps are key collaborative apps. I would differentiate Facebook and LinkedIn as “structured content publishing and sharing, and interactive posting”. They differ in their structure from the QuickBase and Salesforce database apps, though there is overlap and we gain some of their value for our clients with apps that publish, share and track personnel skills, certifications, requests, ideas, and many other things.
If as business leaders you agree like we do with Mr. Moore’s conclusions, the action item takeaway is to accelerate your adoption of QuickBase and other proven cloud products to gain more benefits across your organization.
