You are moving to the cloud, so when is it?

Hello, I know there are a lot of post on this topic but it creates a lot of buzz and has few compelling reasons to talk about it.

I do not have concrete evidence to prove that the shift is significant and will definitively have an impact, but the trend speaks for itself. Over the next few years, it is inevitable that the shift towards cloud will continue( be it IaaS, Paas or SaaS).

I know people working for few domains where there are lot of restriction involved with where the data is residing will be hesitant to move to cloud. But at an executive level(be it small, mid or large enterprise), this is a no-brainer because it has three huge, huge advantages like  disaster recovery, cost savings and easier data management. Most government agencies, have preferred vendors, who they have started using now because they would like to reduce costs and leverage these features available. Now, as a bank or if I am in health sector why should I stress myself with running data centers and planning DR’s when some one who has the almighty expertise, R&D and is dedicated to do all these. However, the question of companies passing these savings to employees or customers is a question for another day but this enables them to do things better at a lesser cost.

Our fellow blogger, Bala predicted that 70% of SPC14 sessions will be cloud related. I am sure, this is where the industry especially Microsoft relating to us is focussing on, they want to take advantage of the Virtualization and all the goodness it has to offer. I hope you are all guessing where I am heading towards, my takeaway is we need to embrace, prepare ourselves for this which does not mean just O365, because eventually hosting everything on the cloud might be a reality (both public and private options included). For SharePoint, we will see the disparity squeeze between O365 and On-premises(non-O365). For IT Pros, Dev’s and BA’s/PM’s, you will find change in release process, DR planning and upgrade a bit different to what you have been doing.

Last but not least, by 2016 presumably when the next version of SharePoint comes we might be forced to do solutions and design which leverages O365. We as individuals and organizations need to plan a whole lot to see if we are going to stick to trusted on-premises or cool cloud or the killer Hybrid! Timing is also critical as it will give you some savings and advantages.

Please share your thoughts in the comments.