The lure of cloud computing is obvious: freedom from managing applications, platforms, and infrastructure -- abstracting IT complexity to the point where it just works and, often, at a much lower price than running or hosting it yourself. That appeal has spawned a growing, vocal contingent of cloud computing "completists" who are more than happy to surrender their IT concerns to the cloud.
Software developer Jobscience has a robust technology infrastructure covering everything from software development to HR. But look at what the company lacks: an IT department, servers, and virtually any business software running on-premises. Instead, the 20-employee, San Francisco-based outfit, which develops talent management applications for the health care industry, runs almost entirely "in the cloud."
"We are running the whole business from the cloud, with the exception of ledger," says Jobscience CEO Ted Elliott. That means "development, marketing support, sales, expense, HR, paid time off, and more," and he's even testing CODA and Intacct to run ledger from the cloud.
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The lure of cloud computing is easy to see: freedom from the headaches small and midsize businesses experience managing their own applications, platforms, and infrastructure -- abstracting IT complexity to the point where it just works and, often, for a price that's much less than running or hosting it yourself. Small wonder there's a growing, vocal contingent of cloud computing "completists" made up of business leaders who are more than happy to surrender their IT concerns.
Romancing The Cloudscape
Already, many software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications have shown they play to smaller companies' needs. "The promise of the cloud right now is really around low-cost, high reliability, commoditized applications," says Rob Koplowitz, an analyst at Cambridge, Mass.-based Forrester Research. But, he notes, commoditized applications have a downside: Cloud-based technology "is going to be heavily generic," Koplowitz says, meaning that companies could end up with the exact same software as their competitors.
But for small and midsize businesses, building bespoke enterprise applications turbocharged for market domination is not a huge concern like that of larger enterprises -- think Unilever battling it out with Procter & Gamble. In contrast, smaller companies prefer to treat IT not as skunk works, but as plain old plumbing. "Smaller companies really just want this stuff to work," Koplowitz says. And that's a perfect role for cloud computing.
"Just working" means that running in the cloud can help companies avoid software development and maintenance hassles. For example, Author Solutions, a Bloomington, Ind.-based provider of publishing services with 400 employees, is in the process of consolidating its multiple offerings -- iUniverse, AuthorHouse, and Wordclay, each of which has its own front-end platform and sales management system -- onto a single, cloud-based platform. "We're in the business of helping authors realize their publishing dreams. We don't want to have to be in the software business," says Keith Ogorek, director of marketing. "By using a platform such as Salesforce's Force.com, it allows us to focus on optimizing our business ... and to react more quickly to new market opportunities."
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