Cloud computing is becoming more and more acceptable as aform of delivering content, scaling infrastructure and enabling business’s todeliver services over the web. One could argue that there are a few limitationsthat are at the present time impacting the full growth and adoption of cloudbased technologies and these are mainly associated with growing pains of any relativitynew industry:-

1. Ubiquity of internet availability, speed andservice (for instance in Latin America, South America and some parts of Africa,Asia and India ISP’s and broadband services are still lacking, thus inhibiting adoption)

2. Legal and compliance – Processing data outsideof a company’s normal operating jurisdiction is still a “big ask” for CTO’s toget their head around (legal or not) and various data protection acts andintrusive legislation like the Patriot Act do not help

3. Governance and standards – the cloud industry isstill forming, vendors are in land grab mode, sweeping large amounts of SMBcustomers up and converting them to cloud based technologies. At the enterpriselevel there is some reluctance to embrace the cloud due to lack of governanceand standards within the industry. Vague SLA’s, issues around Safe Harbour anddata privacy, protection and security are certainly hampering adoption ofenterprise customers.

4. Utility services – In our view the cloud is autility, it should be as readily available as say any other utility likeelectricity, water, gas –one does not consider the type of electricity thatcomes out of a socket when plugging in a laptop into a hotel room socket whiletraveling, one simply just expects it to work. Cloud needs to adopt a similarubiquity of service, when a customer procures a cloud service the SLA should bea given, the service guaranteed and the flavour universal.

Cloud computing is going to change the world, it is the nextindustrial revolution, in years to come much like with the birth of theinternet and everyone was talking about dotcoms, now one does not refer to acompany as a dotcom – there just a company like any other (for instance we callFacebook – Facebook not facebook.com) expect the same for cloud vendors, theywill be utility companies known only by name, reputation and service.