The annual 2010 Gartner technology hype-cycle report is out - and wouldn't you know cloud computing, cloud-web platforms and private clouds are all at or near the top of the peak of expectations section of the curve.Now to be clear - Gartner, which is focused on large enterprise IT departments , uses the term cloud computing a bit differently than I do on this blog - they generally mean the idea of large IT CIOs using "iron in the sky" like Amazon EC2 as a place to run their computing workloads instead of on servers in their own data centers. Gartner rates Software as a Service applications like Intact and Salesforce much closer to the plateau of productivity.
What is interesting to me in this is the speed of adoption that Gartner are predicting for cloud computing - note that most of the other dots for technologies at the top of the "peak of expectations" are dark blue, meaning it will take 5 to 10 years for them to become mainstream (Remember - to Gartner mainstream means even information technology laggards will adopt - so mainstream really does mean ubiquitous). But all the various permutations of cloud computing carry light blue dots - mainstream in 2 to 5 years.
Now remember that all of this is for large enterprises - the benefits of Software as a Service and cloud computing are far larger for small and midsized businesses than they are for giant corporations. This is because large corporates operate at sufficient scale that they can gain some of the operating efficiencies that the large cloud vendors accrue. The beauty of cloud computing for small and midsized businesses is that they can tap into those very same efficiencies - that's why I call cloud computing the great democratizer - offering SMBs cost and operational benefits formerly only available to large enterprises.
What's the bottom line - Gartner is predicting cloud computing will be mainstream in the large enterprise in 2 to 5 years. That says you should come in with a skeptical eye and beware the hype - but at the same time you should start piloting now or risk getting left behind your peer companies that are already jumping in with both feet.
Where would I be the most skeptical - with legacy software vendors that are offering up hosted versions of their old on-premises applications on Amazon or Rackspace that you access via Citrix - and calling this cloud computing to try to take advantage of the cloud computing buzz. Going this route will put you right into the trough of disillusionment...
