Lori MacVittie

Paul Miller, who pens Cloud of Data, had an interesting perspective during a chat this week on what effect infrastructure upgrade cycles might have on cloud computing adoption.

Paul postulated that as these servers fail and organizations have to make the decision to replace or not replace them that cloud computing becomes a more viable option. That seems a reasonable assumption, especially if the primary reason organizations are evaluating cloud computing is driven by a desire to reduce costs.

But in a recent post Paul posits this might not be the case, citing a recent ongoing study from Avanade in which C-level executives were asked, among other questions, how the economic climate effected their decisions regarding cloud. Interestingly “only 13% suggesting it had ‘helped’ adoption plans and 58% reporting ‘no effect.’”

In my conversations with Nick Carr and others, there’s been an underlying presumption (on my part, as well as theirs) that cost-saving arguments with respect to Cloud Computing would prove persuasive and compelling. It would appear not. This would suggest, of course, that Enterprise adopters are taking to the Cloud for reasons other than the budget sheet…

I’ll come back to this, as I’m not convinced there is a direct correlation between external economics and internal budgets, at least in this case. But let’s go with that for a moment. Assuming there are budgetary constraints on organizations what else would drive adopters to cloud computing and where are they getting the money?