Adoption? All over the map

Over on ICAEW IT Counts, Adrian Pearson asserts:

Back to the real world – and accountants are currently rushing to embrace the new, online accounting systems.

I’m sure Adrian believes that and I would like to as well. Truth is that adoption is all over the map.

Last week, UNIT 4 published adoption research which said:

1). Cloud adoption rates remain steady in 2011

2). Cloud adoption among Public Sector organisations will grow in line with commercial sector

3). Enterprise applications will move to the cloud gradually over the next 10 years

What they don’t say but which I discovered from a detailed sector analysis is that 56.6% of public sector respondents believe some or all of their finance and accounting functions are already in the cloud.

Yesterday Microsoft talked about consulting with an old colleague of mine, Nigel Montgomery of Gartner about SaaS/cloud adoption. Nigel is one of the ‘good guy’ analysts. He deals in facts, knows his stuff and doesn’t sugar coat. After the session I asked him what he’s finding: “37%” he shot back. “Doing what?” I asked, “Good question,” says Nigel because when you start to dig into the data it is all over the map.

One of the problems is about definitional clarity. SaaS was relatively easy to understand but ‘cloud’ has become so bastardised that it could mean almost anything. If you are a regular Twitter reader then you’d be forgiven for thinking there is nothing but cloud applications. I’m at a Microsoft conference and I can assure anyone reading this that 9,300 people see things differently.

My analyst colleagues are peppering Microsoft execs about cloud ERP as though that’s the only topic on the agenda. There are hundreds of customer sessions dealing with more prosaic issues.

The reality as I perceive it is that ‘cloud’ is something many people have heard about but few can truly articulate what it means for their business.

This is another example where the industry is doing a lousy job and where the desire to keep up with the fashionista is leading to the waste of millions in marketing baloney.

There’s a great expression some of us use when we see vendor representatives talking too loudly about this or that technology: Drinking too much Kool-Aid. That needs changing. Drinking too much Red Bull – but without the red…