Cloud Computing: The Good, the Bad, the Ugly and the Potentially Great

In the world of technology today, cloud computing is front and center of every discussion. The marketplace is dominated by three major digital leaders: Amazon, Microsoft and Google, with a number of other conventional technology companies still racing to compete and not giving up easily.

With the advent of the Internet, the worldwide democratization of computing occurred at an exponential scale. Connectivity is becoming more and more affordable to a large portion of the population on the planet. Billions of connected devices are being sold every year, and the open source-based software development have truly transformed the digital world to the point that "becoming digital" is the talk in every boardroom, think tank and management consultant firms.

*Let's take a quick look at the good, the bad and the ugly of this disruptive transformation for enterprises.*

Cloud computing has noticeably helped enterprises. Communication and collaboration platforms are sustainable, high performing, scalable and cheaper. Agility in building computing infrastructure has improved dramatically. Capacity planning no longer needs to be perfect due to the elasticity of cloud computing. Developing and maintaining external facing applications and user experiences for customers are simpler and faster. All of these are, indeed, indisputable and good outcomes of cloud computing in enterprises.

If we look closely, about the sustainability of traditional technology in enterprises, the story is nothing to celebrate. Because of the extent of disruptive change in a very short period of time, legacy enterprise software companies failed to re-architecture and rebuild their products for the cloud. In fear of losing relevance, most frantically acquired new software products that offered a better experience for a small set of functions within their products. All of them created small patch integration with their existing products and declared victory in their cloud computing transformation! Large legacy enterprise software companies struggled through this disruption and continue to struggle in enterprise application space because they have no economically viable way to react at a pace that the market now demands. Unfortunately, this has created a huge digital divide inside the enterprise versus outside -- a bad outcome for sure.

And what is so ugly about this disruption? To take advantage of a better experience for a small fraction of the functionalities, enterprises have been forced to adapt the newly acquired software solutions by their enterprise software providers and pay for it as a subscription. In addition to the cost increase, the complexity of managing the enterprise started increasing exponentially with these spiderweb application integrations. Market pressure from pundits and customer advisory services sponsored by enterprise software providers persuaded most CIOs to play along with "software as a service" -- a fancy term that hid the fact that cost structures skyrocket when legacy applications cannot be replaced completely. In addition, the complexity increased tenfold and the sustainability of the technology platforms for the enterprises as a whole wound up in a very ugly state.

To catch up with the market which is driven and addicted to experience, enterprises need to make bold steps during this disruptive technology transformation cycle. Seriously think about sustainability, simplicity and optimal cost which are important to all. This has to be beyond the slogan of "cloud first" and "mobile first". The focus has to be on a sustainable execution plan. In many cases, this means building things from ground up because your legacy enterprise software partners are not going to be able to get what your customers need in any meaningful timeline.

Indeed, the democratization of computing and digital experience is a great success story for the consumer experience, and it has created opportunities for millions of entrepreneurs to pursue their dreams in a free market. Anyone with a brilliant idea in the digital domain can create a product or service and scale those for billions of customers overnight because of the democratization of cloud computing. We are also at the beginning of practical applications of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning with dependable outcome when the data collected from various connected devices are pre-curated and can be used for generating dependable insights!.

The world will be a better place eventually with advancement in computing including cloud. But the disruptive technology transformation can be very painful for enterprises who do not have the thought leadership and a deep understanding of what is happening around them. The habit of chasing the next shining object in technology space without a sustainable and at scale execution model, will just elongate this painful and frustrating transition period!!.