Mama but we’re all crazy now!!

Over on AccountingWeb, Mark Lee interviewed Frances Critchlow, director of online legal employment document provider Cleardocs about cloud computing. The conversation is going all over the place. Regular readers will know I have my own issues with this term. Below I reproduce the comments I offered:

It’s fitting that as we approach the festive season in reading these comments [to the original post] I am minded of the lyrics of an old Slade song. As one who has slammed AW and the industry for conflating the issue, had supporters kick back at me and still come up smiling I can’t help but think people are getting way bent out of shape on this discussion. So here’s a few observations from someone who’s been living and breathing this ’stuff’ for a fair few years and believes that SaaS/On-demand/Cloud (SOC – now waiting for the K to turn up…get it?) is where we’ll end up.

• When I first started talking about this back in 2005, John S[tokdyk] told me: ‘Won’t happen…at least not for the next five years.’ The fact these debates are occurring puts paid to that idea because as I observe the landscape, new vendors are popping up all the time. Why? Because there’s a perceived need. Will they all survive? No. Will it matter? No. Why? Because software companies rarely die, they simply get acquired. Check out Oracle’s acquisition path.
• The recent injection of ‘cloud’ as a term to be consumed and understood is a reflection of the fashion driven nature of the IT industry. As Larry Ellison, CEO Oracle recently said: ‘Last year it was fuchsia, this year it’s puce.’ He’s right. Even though he’s a heavy investor in these technologies via Salesforce.com and Netsuite he runs one of the largest on-premise based IT businesses in the world.
• Jumping on ‘cloud’ has a nice fluffy feel to it that permeates marketing and serves to make us feel good about something that few understand. Especially when it’s accompanied by shades of light blue on the web sites that are making this concept a centrepiece of their marketing. Conversely, it has opened the door to a technology firestorm around definition. It’s happening here and on other AW threads. It’s great for AW page views but is utterly useless to conveying a sense of what the tech can deliver to the user. That’s what should be conveyed.
• Contrary to what naysayers and accountants may think, it is not they who are deciding. It is end users. Time and again I hear end users telling me they listen to their peers. They have stopped listening to professionals that they consider to be locked in a way of thinking they no longer find helpful. A great example is John O’Nolan who fired his accountant for not wishing to work with his chosen solution. John has gone on to become something of a cause celebre and one of that vendors most effective sales people. Even though he does no selling for the company. This is massively important because it is a new phenomenon that I see permeating every level of business. When you know that then this discussion suddenly becomes sterile.
• Look at the market. Sage’s recent results show organic revenue decline. Compare with Xero’s half year. Others are more coy but from the inside track I’ve been given (under NDA) The more successful vendors are going nuts with demand. At Salesforce.com’s annual user shindig in San Francisco, I saw people queuing to meet Financialforce.com reps. These are people on the sales side of organizations wanting to get info on accounting solutions that complement their CRM solutions. They’re already sold. When did that last happen? It’s a 1.5 million person market in that vendor’s back yard alone.
• Those who worry about security have good points to make but rarely have solutions in mind. Some of us are working on this from an industry perspective. It is clear the industry has not done a good job at providing assurance. If someone thinks it’s insecure then no amount of arguing about that will persuade. The comments I see in these threads are adequate testimony to that topic. That’s why I am working on this problem with others.
• I’ve not had a printer since 2006 and was barely using one prior to. All my data resides in services that are driven by low cost internet based infrastructures. I HAVE NEVER LOST ANY DATA. Prior to, if a machine went belly up (as they have a habit of doing every 2-3 years) I’d spend days recreating my system and attempting to recreate the data – if that was at all possible. Since 2006 I’ve used, trashed or passed on 5 laptops and two deskside machines. I’m that careless with my kit. Today I have a deskside iMac and a MacBookPro, both of which are effortlessly synched with whatever data is out on the Internet. I live in Spain where the prospect of a 20MB download speed and 512K upload is a distant dream. Yet the internet serves me very well because it is a lot more than the connection, it is the service and all that goes around it.
• The industry needs to do a much better job communicating its value proposition but it has to do so in a way that’s contextually relevant to the user. It’s starting that process now. When that happens, accountants may come on board. They may not. Those that do will win, those that don’t? They could be in for a very tough time. If I had my way, I’d scrap all this talk of cloud and concentrate on things that matter like benefit, time to value, collaboration, speed of operation and so on. Getting mired in the details of how long it takes to get a keystroke is a side issue.
• Asking users what they make of cloud is asking the wrong question. You’ll get any number of answers based on what they were sold or heard. That’s a demonstration of the hysteria around this topic that media soaks up with glee. It is little wonder it sets up the to and fro we see on AW. It doesn’t happen where I live because I’m keenly aware that buyers don’t want to buy cloud anything. They want value for money solutions that make business sense and provide a way of using their IT investments to be better at what they do, all at diminishing cost. SOC does that – in spades. Put in those terms, this debate should take on a completely different flavour.

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