Yes, The Cloud is Real!

Today Informatica‘s CIO Tony Young wrote a great summary of how he thinks about cloud computing, with a specific focus on software as a service (SaaS). His post is called, “Is the Cloud Real?“

His answer is a definitive, “YES!”

He notes that his organization now manages more SaaS apps than on-premise apps. (BTW, it looks like Fern’s prediction has come true – nobody says “on-premises” anymore!)

Tony makes the following point about the need for a cloud integration strategy:

“In many cases, the business becomes enamored with the pretty interface, and doesn’t consider the back-end requirements of administration and integration. This is how they are sold and presented by some SaaS sales teams. SaaS apps can technically exist in the absence of integration, but they lose their effectiveness. For example, will user administration be managed manually or integrated with your directory. If it’s not integrated, who’s responsible for adding and terminating users from the system? If you use a SaaS CRM solution, customer data needs to be integrated with other systems or its overall value also diminishes.“

A few months ago I interviewed Tony and members of his team to learn about their experiences implementing salesforce.com and other SaaS applications. I posted the interviews here:

• SaaS And Enterprise Architecture: Key Enablers Of IT Innovation
• Adopting Salesforce CRM: The Importance Of Data Integration
• Adopting Cloud Applications: Evaluating TCO
• The Importance Of Trust To Cloud Adoption